TY - GEN
T1 - A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies in Plastic Waste Management
AU - Mazhandu, Zvanaka S.
AU - Muzenda, Edison
AU - Belaid, Mohamed
AU - Nhubu, Trust
AU - Mbohwa, Charles
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - The world is facing socio-economic, environmental, and health challenges because of plastic pollution. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that selected treatment methods used in plastic waste management do not create unforeseen environmental challenges that add to the burden of the plastic waste problem. This study aims to determine the volume of literature (academic and grey literature) published thus far on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of plastic waste management (PWM) methods and assess their geographical scope, evaluated processes and software and characterisation methods that can be used in LCA studies. This was done by conducting a scoping review which yielded 45 studies for literature synthesis. Results show that gaps in LCA studies involving PWM still exist in Africa and other regions except for Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia. Further, most authors agree that mechanical recycling benefits the environment under certain conditions. Therefore, it should be promoted while simultaneously working towards finding other complementary methods, such as chemical recycling.
AB - The world is facing socio-economic, environmental, and health challenges because of plastic pollution. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that selected treatment methods used in plastic waste management do not create unforeseen environmental challenges that add to the burden of the plastic waste problem. This study aims to determine the volume of literature (academic and grey literature) published thus far on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of plastic waste management (PWM) methods and assess their geographical scope, evaluated processes and software and characterisation methods that can be used in LCA studies. This was done by conducting a scoping review which yielded 45 studies for literature synthesis. Results show that gaps in LCA studies involving PWM still exist in Africa and other regions except for Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia. Further, most authors agree that mechanical recycling benefits the environment under certain conditions. Therefore, it should be promoted while simultaneously working towards finding other complementary methods, such as chemical recycling.
KW - Incineration
KW - Life Cycle Assessment
KW - Mechanical Recycling
KW - Plastic Waste Management Methods
KW - Scoping Review
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85199142373&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-97-0372-2_56
DO - 10.1007/978-981-97-0372-2_56
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85199142373
SN - 9789819703715
T3 - Environmental Science and Engineering
SP - 695
EP - 708
BT - Frontiers of Energy and Environmental Engineering - Selected Papers from the 2nd International Conference on Frontiers of Energy and Environment Engineering CFEEE 2023
A2 - Wen, Fushuan
A2 - Zhu, Jizhong
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - 2nd International Conference on Frontiers of Energy and Environmental Engineering, CFEEE 2023
Y2 - 1 September 2023 through 3 September 2023
ER -