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.