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Life Cycle Assessment of a Plastic Part Injected with Recycled Polypropylene: A Comparison with Alternative Virgin Materials

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Abstract

Plastics recycling is becoming a common action to reduce our products and processes' environmental impact, and it is of the utmost importance to introduce circular economy strategies. However, for most of the different types of thermoplastics, recycling is not currently its usual end of life due to the technical difficulties in the sorting and recycling processes. This paper presents the complete life cycle assessment of an industrial component made with three different thermoplastics; two virgin thermoplastics typically used for similar parts in the market as Polyamide 6 and Polypropylene, and an alternative source of 100% recycled Polypropylene. All life cycle stages are included in the study. After carrying out the life cycle inventory, calculations of the environmental impact of each life cycle steps have been performed with ReCiPe 2016 EndPoint (H/A) v1.03/World and with IPCC 2013 GWP 100a v1.03 methodologies, comparing all three materials under the same conditions. A sensibility assessment has also been performed, calculating a worst-case scenario of the recycled material, and considering higher material acquisition distances. This study shows that recycled Polypropylene contributes to reducing the overall environmental impact of the component life cycle by 29.8% under ReCiPe, and by 42.8% under Carbon Footprint when compared to virgin Polypropylene. For the worst-case scenario, these reductions in the environmental impact of the component life cycle are also significant: 23.2% and 36.4%, respectively, showing that the use of recycled polymers is a key approach to reduce the environmental impact of plastic components.

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Abbreviations

EEA:

European economic area

EOL:

End of life

ErP:

Energy-related products

EuP:

Energy-using products

ISO:

International Organization for Standardization

LCA:

Life Cycle Assessment

PA:

Polyamide

PP:

Polypropylene

REACH:

Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals

REAPro:

Resource efficiency assessment of products

RoHS:

Restriction of hazardous substances

WEEE:

Waste electrical and electronic equipment

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank RIALTI SpA for their capacity and for providing data and material for the analysis. Also, we would like to acknowledge the company Inyecciones Montañana (Inymon) for their openness to the processes and their will to collaborate in the study. The study presented in this paper has been partially supported by the Spanish MINECO under Project RETO RTC-2017-5965-6, and has been performed by members of the I+AITIIP (DGA-T08_20R) research group of the FEDER 2014-2020 """ 'Building Europe from Aragón'" program, recognized by the Regional Government of Aragon.

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  1. BSH Electrodomésticos España, S.A, Avda. de La Industria, 49, 50016, Zaragoza, Spain

    José Eduardo Galve & Carmelo Pina

  2. i+AITIIP, Department of Mechanical Engineering, EINA, University of Zaragoza, Maria de Luna 3, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain

    Daniel Elduque & Carlos Javierre

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  1. José Eduardo Galve
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Galve, J.E., Elduque, D., Pina, C. et al. Life Cycle Assessment of a Plastic Part Injected with Recycled Polypropylene: A Comparison with Alternative Virgin Materials. Int. J. of Precis. Eng. and Manuf.-Green Tech. 9, 919–932 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-021-00363-2

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