ESST 2002: Environmental Technology

Assignment #3

You are the Minister of Environmental Affairs for the Mauritius Government. The increased need for
disposal of the increasing volume of used Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles has been a cause for
concern. To assist Government in decision-making, a study on PET bottles and its disposal was
undertaken using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool. Three disposal scenarios, namely (100%)
landfilling; (100%) incineration; and 50% landfilling and 50% incineration were compared.

The aim of the study was to compare the environmental effects during the whole life cycle (from
manufacture to waste management) of the usage of PET plastic material for bottling applications on the
island of Mauritius using the LCA methodology, and to use the LCA tool to compare three alternative
disposal methods for the used PET bottles (Figure 1), namely:

• disposal of used PET bottles by landfilling-the plastic bottles that are generated in households are
collected together with residual waste and deposited in a landfill

• disposal of used PET bottles by incineration with energy recovery-the plastic bottles that are generated
in households are collected with the source sorted plastic packaging and sent to an incinerator

• disposal of 50% of the used PET bottles by landfilling and 50% by incineration.
Figure 1: Flow chart associated with the PET bottles
Data:

You are given the data below to consider the inputs and outputs of the given scenarios. Use this
information to guide your decision for moving the Ministry forward.

Table 1: Inputs

Table 2: Outputs
Table 3: Summary of all 3 scenarios