Recycling Plant Biomass and Life Cycle Assessment in Circular Economy Systems

The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of life cycle assessment (LCA) in facilitating plant biomass recycling in circular economies (CE) whose nature is transformative toward sustainable environmental management. The chapter discussed the processes of biomass recycling and LCA before linking them to CE to understand their potential in enhanced use of limited resources toward environmental sustainability and using a literature review-based approach. Biochemical and thermochemical processes are shown to be useful in plant biomass conversion to bioenergy. The former processes use fermentation and anaerobic digestion and are environmentally friendlier compared to thermochemical approaches that rely on heat changes. LCA is shown to support CE by providing evidence on how environmentally friendly uptakes such as biomass recycling could lead to sustainable development. The study also establishes that energy bioconversions of plant biomass could lead to reduced photochemical oxidation, acidifying, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the use of fossil fuels. However, they are large water and land consumers unless the recycling of biomass is promoted. The study recommends the optimization of LCA preconditions and scenarios during biomass recycling to energy to identify and enhance production stages that have the greatest contribution to climate change mitigation.