Towards a Low-Carbon Plastic Waste Recycling in Finland: Evaluating the Impacts of Improvement Measures on GHG Emissions

Abstract

The use of plastics in products and packaging is growing. At the same time, the lifespan of packaging is short and consequently plastic waste volumes are growing in Finland and globally. Although separate collection and recycling of plastic packaging waste exists in Finland, it needs to be strengthened to reach the European Union’s targets. The separately collected plastic waste is mechanically recycled, but the recycling capacity is small, as is the process’s yield of secondary polymers. Hence, a large share of plastic packaging waste remains being recovered for energy. In our study, we first apply material flow analysis (MFA) to identify different routes of plastic packaging waste in Finland, and then we apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the current system and of alternative scenarios based on improvement measures.