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ScienceDirect
Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
Abstract
The use of large amount of plastic has created environment threats and thus it needs to be recycled. The recycling of plastic waste requires
energy but the energy production with conventional sources depletes the natural resources and creates environmental degradation. This study
aims to assess and compare the environmental and economic impacts from the recycling of PET plastic bottle waste with conventional and
renewable sources of electricity in India. An experiment is conducted wherein the PET bottle waste is used to make filament for 3-D printing
by using three different scenarios. Scenario A uses the virgin PET granules with conventional Indian electricity mix, scenario B uses PET bottle
waste recycling with conventional Indian electricity mix, and scenario C uses PET bottle waste recycling with solar electricity. The ISO 14040
guidelines are followed to conduct cradle-to-grave LCA for scenario A; and grave to grave LCAs for scenarios B & C. The impact categories
considered for the endpoint assessment are ecosystem quality, human health and resources. Climate change, fossil depletion, human toxicity,
ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, and water depletion are considered for midpoint assessment. The results of the study show that
scenario B has high environmental impacts followed by scenarios C & A. The findings of this experimental study suggest the use of renewable
energy (solar electricity) for recycling of PET bottle waste for filament production. The limitation of the study is that it’s a region specific
experiment for environmental and economic impacts.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 26th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) Conference.
Keywords: Life cycle assessment; plastic waste; recycling; economic analysis; climate change.
1. Introduction consumption will reach 583 billion bottles by 2021 [4]. The
waste generated by PET packaging creates not only
Plastics are replacing the conventional materials like metal, environmental issues but also disposal problems. Also, PET
wood and glass because of their lower cost, higher flexibility, waste blocks drains leading to overflowing of drains and
manufacturing ease, and better performance [1,2]. Poly sometimes flooding [5].
Ethylene Terephthalate (PET) is a widely used form of PET bottles can be recycled to produce fabrics,
plastics to make bottles for mineral water, soft drink, ketchup, monofilaments, bottles, etc. In India, discarded PET bottles
pickle, etc. The global production of PET is expected to are collected by rag pickers and sold to kabadiwallas, who
increase from 42 million tonnes (2014) to 72 million tonnes by segregate and sort this and sell to the recyclers. Recyclers
2020. During 2015-16, 900 kilo-tonnes of PET was used in remove the caps, neck rings and labels; and then shred the
India [3]. Specifically, the use of PET for drinking bottles has bottles. This shredded waste is washed and sold as ‘washed
increased from 300 billion in 2000 to 480 billion in 2016 and flakes’ for use as raw material for manufacturing of fibers and
it is expected that this growth will continue and the filaments. There are more than 40 large manufacturers in
2212-8271 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 26th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) Conference.
10.1016/j.procir.2019.01.096
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Kailash Choudhary et al. / Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427 423
India, who use recycled PET as raw material for their 3 represents the materials and methods used for the current
products. The estimated size of the recycled PET business in research. Section 4 illustrates and discusses the results. The
India is $400-550 million [6]. study ends with conclusions in section 5.
According to NCL (National Chemical Laboratory) [3] and
PACE (PET Packaging Association for Clean Environment)
[7], India has 90% recycling rate of PET which is higher than
Japan (72.1%), Europe (48.3%) and United States (31%). PET
waste in India is recycled by the organized sector (65%),
unorganized sector (15%) and reused at home (10%).
There are life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in the
literature which investigate plastic waste treatment, packaging
production, and use of recycled plastics in buildings & roads
construction, fiber production, and flake production [8]. There
are many studies which compare the environmental and
economic impacts of various waste PET disposal methods [5].
LCA can be used as a tool to evaluate, compare and
benchmark the environmental impacts in various midpoint and
endpoint categories [9,10]. The LCA concept came into
existence during 1970-90 but the standardization of
approaches and terminologies took place during 1990-2000
[11]. Society of Toxicology And Chemistry (SETAC) played
a leading role in continuous improvement and harmonization
of LCA frameworks, terminologies and methodologies with
the help of collaboration between scientists, practitioners and
users [12,13]. SETAC and United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP) developed ‘life cycle initiatives’ containing
general and specific aims to promote life cycle thinking in
developing countries [14]. The present study is a step towards
fulfilling these aims suggested by SETAC and UNEP.
Fig. 1. System boundary and process flow model for recycling of PET bottles
This study investigates the possibility, through an
experiment, to use waste PET bottles as a raw material in
2. Literature review
additive manufacturing (3D printing). The investigation
contains environmental and economic impacts assessment of
There are a few studies related to the LCA of plastic waste
waste PET bottles when used as raw material for additive
recycling and additive manufacturing. Foolmaun and
manufacturing. This study also compares the environmental
Ramjeeawon [5] conducted a comparative LCA study in
and economic aspects of PET bottle recycling using
Mauritius of various disposal scenarios for waste PET bottles
conventional and solar energy sources. The electricity mix
and identified that 75% flake production with 25% landfill is
from Indian region is selected for the study as conventional
environmentally and economically sustainable option for the
electricity. Three scenarios have been compared for the
recycling of PET waste. Recycling of PET bottles results into
environmental and economic impacts: scenario A (virgin
the reduced consumption of virgin crude oil and natural gas;
plastic as raw material with conventional Indian electricity
and also reduces the associated carbon dioxide emissions [4].
mix), scenario B (PET bottle waste as raw material with
Gu et al. [1] compared the environmental impacts from plastic
conventional Indian electricity mix, and scenario C (PET
waste mechanical recycling using different routes. The study
bottle waste as raw material with solar energy).
identified that distributed recycling of plastic waste has higher
The conventional energy generation technologies use fossil
environmental impacts compared to centralized recycling. The
fuels. Only 14% of the total global energy demand is fulfilled
study observed that the extrusion process for filament
by the renewable sources. Conventional energy generation not
production has large contribution to the environmental
only depletes the natural resources but also contributes to
impacts in plastic waste recycling. Banavidas et al. [4]
environmental impacts. Therefore, the use of renewable
compared the environmental impacts generated during the
energy sources (solar, wind, biomass, etc.) should be increased
production of a PET bottle by fossil fuel-derived, bio-derived
for the protection of the natural resources and environment.
and recycled materials. The greenhouse gas emissions are
Among the renewable energy sources, solar is abundantly
lower by 82% in bio-derived PET production. Toniolo et al.
available clean form of energy which has the potential to
[9] compared the environmental impacts from the non-
generate three times the current global energy demand. Solar
recyclable multilayer and recyclable monolayer PET
PV system is widely used technology for the generation of the
packaging; and concluded that recyclable packaging produces
electricity due to its easy installation and low maintenance
lesser environmental impacts.
[15].
Zhao et al. [16] investigated the potential to recycle
The next section of this study shows the literature review
polylactic acid (PLA), used in 3-D printers, from the
related to the LCA of PET recycling and 3-D printing. Section
perspective of material properties and environmental
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424 Kailash Choudhary et al. / Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427
performance. The study identified, through LCA, that closed 3. Materials and method
loop recycling of 3-D printed products has lower
environmental impacts as compared to the incineration or LCAs for scenarios A, B & C have been performed by
landfill. Gaikwad et al. [17] compared the CO2 emissions and following ISO 14040 guidelines [22]. Umberto NXT software
material properties of recycled e-waste filament printing and tool with eco-invent 3.0 database is used to develop process
virgin acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) printing through flow models and to calculate the environmental impacts in
the experimental investigations. They observed 28% reduction different categories [23]. Three different Umberto models are
in CO2 emissions in the recycling of e-waste compared to developed for three different scenarios. The three scenarios
virgin ABS printing. Kreiger et al. [18] compared the have been compared for environmental impacts. The
environmental impacts from the recycling of high density economic comparison has also been done by calculating the
polyethylene (HDPE) using 3-D printers in the distributed and cost of conventional and solar electricity, required in different
centralized production scenarios. The study found that the processes for different scenarios.
centralized recycling of HDPE in low density population area
uses substantial amount of energy for the transportation of 3.1. Goals and scope
products and collection of the waste. Kreiger and Pearce [19]
conducted a comparative LCA for the distributed and This study conducts an experiment at the sustainable
centralized production methods using conventional and solar manufacturing and life cycle engineering laboratory of BITS
electricity. The products are fabricated with ABS and PLA in Pilani, India to get the primary data for the environmental and
the experimental study. This study identified that distributed economic analysis of PET bottle waste recycling. The goal of
production of plastic material using 3-D printer with this study are:
renewable source of energy has lower environmental impacts.
This study also claims that recycling of post-consumer To quantify and compare the environmental impacts from
products for 3-D printer filaments results into the lower the different scenarios of PET bottle waste recycling.
environmental impacts, cost and resource consumption. To perform the comparative economic analysis for
Cerdas et al. [20] compared the environmental impacts conventional and solar electricity use for PET bottle waste
generated during the production of an eyeglass frame by recycling.
centralized and distributed production systems using LCA.
The study found that most of the environmental impacts are The scope this study is cradle to grave for scenario A and
generated by the electricity consumed in 3-D printing. Hence, grave to grave for scenarios B & C.
the selection of electricity mix significantly influences the
environmental impacts from the printing process. Garcia et al. 3.2. System boundaries and functional unit
[21] in their review article, on environmental performance of
additive manufacturing, observed that most of the studies Fig. 1 shows the process flow and system boundary for
focused on the energy consumed by 3-D printers and its three scenarios. Scenario A uses the virgin PET granules as
environmental impacts. The literature review can be raw material for the manufacturing of filaments using
summarized as: extrusion process. These filaments are used in 3-D printers.
Scenarios B & C use the waste PET bottle as raw material,
Most of the researchers focused on environmental impacts which are shredded and heated for the extrusion of filaments
assessment of energy consumption in 3-D printing because used in 3-D printers. Scenarios A & B use the conventional
it contributes to most of the environmental impacts. electricity produced in India and scenario C uses the
It is found that ReCiPe method is widely used in electricity produced by renewables source (solar). One
environmental impact assessment studies because of its kilogram of printed PET filament is taken as the functional
wide coverage in midpoint category assessment and unit to calculate and compare the environmental and
consolidated coverage in endpoint category assessment. economic impacts of the three scenarios.
Most the research is limited to developed nations. Scenario A uses the virgin granules which are directly used
Recycling of PET is environmentally beneficial compared in extruder for producing filaments. Shredding and heating
to landfill. processes are not required in this scenario because virgin
granules have uniform size and do not contain moisture.
Although there are various environmental benefits from the Wherein, scenarios B & C use shredding, washing and heating
recycling of PET bottles but recycling always requires energy to reduce size, remove impurities, and remove moisture from
which decreases the environmental and economic benefits of shredded PET bottle waste respectively. It is important to
recycling. The literature also shows that selection of remove the impurities and moisture from the shredded PET
electricity mix for 3-D printing influences the environmental waste to prevent reduction of strength and formation of the
performance of recycling. Therefore, this paper explores the bubbles during the filament extrusion. The moisture content
possibility of replacing conventional source of energy by also drastically reduces the melting temperature of PET,
renewable source for sustainable recycling of PET bottle which results into higher PET waste during extrusion process.
waste.
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Kailash Choudhary et al. / Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427 425
3.3. Inventory analysis because it removes the barriers to select different impact
assessment methods for midpoint and endpoint assessment of
The primary inventory data is collected by conducting environmental impacts [11,14]. Damage to ecosystem quality,
experiments at the sustainable manufacturing and life cycle human health and resources are taken as three endpoint
engineering laboratory of BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, India. impact categories. Climate change (CC), fossil depletion
The experiment is performed with 20 waste PET water (FD), human toxicity (HT), ozone deletion (OD), Terrestrial
bottles. Emission (waste PET) and resource consumption acidification (TA), and water depletion (WD) categories are
(electricity) values are collected at each process by close used to demonstrate midpoint environmental impacts from the
observation (table 1). Table 1 shows the differences in input PET bottle waste recycling by three different scenarios. The
PET material in different scenarios. This difference is because literature related to the LCA of plastic waste recycling is
of the absence of shredding and heating processes in scenario referred [1,16,21] for the selection of these particular impact
A. In scenario A, there will be no PET waste from these categories.
processes. Whereas, shredding and heating processes are
present in scenarios B & C, which emit solid PET waste. The 4. Results and discussion
eco-invent database 3.0 is used as a secondary data source for
the upstream activities required during the production of 4.1. Endpoint assessment
virgin PET granules, electricity, PV panels and for
downstream activities required for the treatment of waste Assessment and comparison of the environmental impacts
PET. Indian electricity mix dataset (IN) is used for electricity is done for scenarios A, B & C in terms of endpoint
production. India generates most of its electricity from coal, assessment categories (damage to ecosystem quality, damage
hydropower, natural gas, etc. [24]. Global dataset (GLO) is to human health, and damage to resources). Fig. 2 graphically
used for the production of virgin PET and treatment of waste and table 2 numerically show the results in terms of
PET. Switzerland (CH) dataset is used for production of PV standardized points. The results show that scenario B creates
panels as no other dataset is available for PV panel highest damage to environment followed by scenario C and
production. Selection of datasets from other regions (GLO scenario A in selected endpoint categories. Fig. 2 shows that
and CH) is due to the unavailability of Indian dataset in manufacturing phase is mainly responsible for this
ecoivent 3.0 database for these activities. environmental damage followed by waste treatment and raw
material phases.
Table 1. Inventory list for different scenarios
Electricity 3-d printer Fig. 2. Graphical comparisons of endpoint environmental impacts from
2.34E+04 2.34E+04 2.34E+04 KJ
different scenarios
Waste PET shredder 0.00E+00 2.13E+02 2.13E+02 g
Table 2. Numerical comparisons of endpoint environmental impacts from
Waste treatment
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426 Kailash Choudhary et al. / Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427
These results demonstrate that use of virgin material Table 3. Numerical comparisons of midpoint environmental impacts from
instead of recycled material leads to minimum damage to the different scenarios
environment in all the three endpoint categories. This shows Assessment Raw Manufactur Waste Total
Scenario
that the recycling of PET is highly energy absorbing process category material ing treatment impacts
and the damage to the environment from electricity use for A 4.37E-03 2.83E-02 2.76E+00 2.79E+00
recycling dominates the damage to environment. 3-D printing Climate change
B 0.00E+00 3.20E+01 3.32E+00 3.53E+01
(kg CO2-Eq)
using recycling of waste PET bottles creates environmental C 0.00E+00 1.62E+00 3.32E+00 4.95E+00
damage because shredding and heating processes consume
A 2.24E-03 6.46E-03 2.32E-02 3.19E-02
large amount of electricity. It can be observed that the heating
Fossil depletion B 0.00E+00 7.30E+00 2.79E-02 7.32E+00
process, used to remove moisture, consumes 8% energy. (kg oil-Eq)
C 0.00E+00 4.50E-01 2.79E-02 4.78E-01
Better technology for moisture removal can decrease the
environmental impacts of the recycling process. However, the A 1.59E-03 7.92E-03 3.57E-01 3.67E-01
scenario C creates lesser environmental impacts than scenario Human toxicity B 0.00E+00 8.94E+00 4.31E-01 9.37E+00
(kg 1,4-DCB-Eq)
B due to the use of solar electricity. Hence, from C 0.00E+00 3.96E-01 4.31E-01 8.27E-01
environmental perspective, the recycling of PET bottles is A 1.45E-10 2.48E-10 5.34E-09 5.73E-09
beneficial only if the energy used for the recycling process is Ozone depletion B 0.00E+00 2.80E-07 6.43E-09 2.87E-07
clean (renewable). (kg CFC-11-Eq)
C 0.00E+00 8.59E-08 6.43E-09 9.24E-08
A 2.00E-05 1.73E-04 8.40E-04 1.03E-03
4.2. Midpoint assessment Terrestrial
acidification (kg B 0.00E+00 1.96E-01 1.01E-03 1.97E-01
SO2-Eq) C 0.00E+00 8.41E-03 1.01E-03 9.43E-03
Fig. 3 graphically shows the comparison of environmental
impacts from the scenarios A, B & C under different phases in A 1.09E-05 8.53E-05 1.47E-03 1.56E-03
terms of percentage. The percentage bar charts are used Water depletion
B 0.00E+00 9.64E-02 1.77E-03 9.81E-02
(m3)
because midpoint impact category has different unit. Climate C 0.00E+00 9.24E-03 1.77E-03 1.10E-02
change (kg CO2-Eq), fossil depletion (kg oil-Eq), human
toxicity (kg 1,4-DCB-Eq), ozone depletion (kg CFC-11-Eq),
4.3. Economic assessment
terrestrial acidification (kg SO2-Eq), and water depletion (m3)
are selected as midpoint categories to illustrate the
Table 4 shows the economic comparison between the
environmental impacts of different scenarios.
conventional and solar electricity for the production of one
It is observed from Fig. 3 that waste treatment phase of
kilogram of filament by recycling the PET bottle waste using
PET is dominating in selected midpoint categories for
three different scenarios. As mentioned earlier, the location of
scenario A. Scenario B is dominated by manufacturing phase
experimental setup is BITS Pilani, India situated in the north-
in the selected midpoint impact categories. For scenario C,
east part of India. The cost of conventional electricity of one
waste treatment phase is dominating in climate change and
unit (1 kWh) at this location is INR 7.5. The electricity cost
human toxicity categories; and manufacturing phase is
produced from solar plant is INR 2.7 for one unit as claimed
dominating in other categories. The raw material phase has
by ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), India
zero impact in scenarios B & C because the waste PET bottles
[25,26]. BITS Pilani has installed a solar plant of one MWh in
are used as raw material in these scenarios. Scenario A shows
the campus. Scenario A uses the virgin granules which can be
a little impact in raw material phase due to the use of virgin
directly extruded to make wires for 3-D printing. Shredding
PET as raw material.
and heating processes are not required. Thus, for scenario A,
the cost of electricity is zero for these processes in table 4.
This is a resupply of March 2023 as the template used in the publication of the original article contained errors. The content of the article has remained unaffected.
Kailash Choudhary et al. / Procedia CIRP 80 (2019) 422–427 427
This is a resupply of March 2023 as the template used in the publication of the original article contained errors. The content of the article has remained unaffected.