Avaliação do ciclo de vida de garrafas PET: comparativo entre Brasil e Alemanha
Abstract
In view of the growing consumption of plastic packaging worldwide, the
concerns regarding the environmental impacts of plastic wastes have become more
and more relevant. One of the tools used for analyzing such impacts is the Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA), which assesses the impacts and benefits of a material’s life cycle
on the environment. In view of the divergent contexts of gathering and destination of
plastic wastes in Brazil and Germany, the present work evaluated the advantages and
disadvantages in different eco-impact categories of the PET bottle life cycle in both
countries. Four different post-consumer PET disposal scenarios were established –
recycling, sanitary landfill, dump, and incineration – of which dump is relevant for
Brazil, while incineration is typically carried out in Germany – and the amounts of
postconsumer PET sent for each end-of-life treatment were defined based on the
recycling index of the countries. The LCA was performed using the OpenLCA software
and the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) assessment method, considering the production of 1 ton
of PET bottles as a functional unit. Three impact categories were evaluated – global
warming, water consumption and human toxicity. A comparison between the end-oflife treatments for each country was carried out, where in Brazil the sanitary landfill
and open dump scenarios are very similar and the most harmful in terms of global
warming and water consumption, while recycling is the worst alternative for human
toxicity. For Germany, the impacts related to sanitary landfill and incineration were
more pronounced than those related to mechanical recycling. For the comparison
between countries, a scenario was created where part of the PET bottle waste was
sent to sanitary landfill and part for recycling, being the quantities defined by the
recycling indexes of 91% and 55% for Germany and Brazil, respectively. Despite the
higher recycling rate, the treatment of PET bottle wastes in Germany has the most
significant impacts, which can be justified by its fossil-based energy matrix. Overall,
the PET resin and bottle productions contributed at the largest extents for the
environmental impacts in all evaluated categories. Thus, the LCA of this work allowed
concluding that to minimize the impacts of the PET bottle life cycle, a high recycling
rate must be combined with renewable energy sources.
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