2.2.5 Plausibility of the waste management options.............................................................
As this report aims to provide support for decision making regarding the advantages and disadvantages of
different waste management options for different products and materials, the options covered by the scope of the
study are current common options in the UK as well as options that can potentially be developed on a large scale
in the near future. Because of this, prospective scenarios unlikely to be significantly developed have not been
considered.
2.3 Analysis of the selected studies ..............................................................................................
It should first be noted that the restricting criteria chosen for the publication selection led to difficulties in finding
an adequate number of publications fulfilling these criteria for wood and textiles wastes. The number of
publications that were reviewed and finally selected for detailed analysis for each material is reported in Table 2.
The number of scenarios associated with the selected publication is also presented, a scenario being defined as a
coupled material/waste treatment option.
Table 2 Overview of the number of selected publications for each fractionMaterial
Number of
evaluated studies
Number of
selected studies
Number of
scenarios identified
Food and garden waste 37 7 26
Paper and card (^22 5 )
Biopolymers (^29 7 )
Plastics 28 8 59
Textiles 31 / /
Wood (^19) / /
The choice of the impact categories used for the assessment of the different end-of-life alternatives was
established based on the indicators of main interest identified by WRAP, namely:
depletion of natural resources
climate change
cumulative energy demand; and
water consumption.
The climate change potential and energy demand were the most represented indicators among the selected
studies. Almost all LCAs analysed included these two indicators. Depletion of natural resources was also included
relatively often while on the contrary the water consumption indicator was rarely taken into account in the LCAs
selected for the study.
Once the scenarios of interest had been identified within each study, the first step of the analysis of the studies
was to identify the system boundaries and the main assumptions. For each study a table has thus been
established presenting the scenarios, as given in the Appendices. Based on this information, a comparative
analysis of the various end-of-life options could be conducted. The following chapter deals with the outcome from
this comparative analysis for each material. The first two materials studied are the ones that were included in the
previous edition in 2006, i.e. paper/cardboard and plastics. The next sections deal with biopolymers and
food/garden waste. To finish, the two last sections focus on textile and wood waste, for which the analysis
conducted is not as detailed as for the other fractions, due to a lack of published LCAs for these materials.
It must be highlighted that LCAs are carried out differently depending on the objective of the study, the
systems under study, the data available and so on. All these parameters influence the choice of assumptions
and of the modelling approach and eventually the results. This explains why results can differ widely from
one LCA to another without the quality of the studies being at stake. This specificity of each LCA also means
that value judgments cannot be made about the way the LCA has been performed (choice of system
boundaries, use of substitute data, attributional or consequential approach, etc.).