Plastic is valued for its versatility, but concerns have been raised over the environmental impacts of plastic waste. A more in-depth investigation of the plastic system is still needed to understand current flows and factors to close the plastic cycle.
This research applied a material flow analysis (MFA) and transition analysis (TA), using multilevel perspectives, to the plastic circular economy transition in the EU. The MFA covers over 400 categories of plastic-containing products with a detailed analysis of the final destination of waste. The TA identifies the interaction of barriers and drivers to use secondary plastics, with a focus on the regime level along the plastic value chain.
The MFA results indicate the EU produced over 66 million tonnes (Mt) of plastic polymers/fibres and an estimated consumption for plastic products of 73 Mt in 2016. Plastic waste increases amounted to over 37 Mt, and a significant amount of plastic waste was not recovered back into plastics in the EU. The uncertainty analysis of MFA highlights important data quality issues that need to be addressed.
To understand why using secondary plastics presents challenges, the TA mapped the factors across policies and standards, markets and business models, technology, and consumer preferences and behaviours that create a web of constraints and a web of drivers. TA results highlight that data-information-knowledge is the key gap as most of the aspects are cross-cutting. Different actors are involved in new business networks and play multiple roles in driving the co-evolutionary dynamic.
The thesis concludes that significant data gaps need MFA-based knowledge to inform policies that address the barriers and the potential socio-technical changes that can reshape plastic flows. The cases playing out across the whole value chain and four different application areas provide insights that are potentially more widely applicable to the circular economy transition processes in Europe
