Energy demand
As shown in Figure 17, recycling appears more favourable than landfill in all the cases. Regarding the comparison
between recycling and incineration, though the majority of analysed scenarios are in favour of recycling, three
cases attribute an advantage to incineration. Two cases belong to study no 2 and the explanation is that the
sorting and recycling technologies used in these cases require more energy. The last case corresponds to the
feedstock recycling scenario from study no 8 (case 8[PS1]) and should anyway not be compared with the other
recycling scenarios since the process is completely different. In this specific case, the PS waste is not recycled
into new plastics products but is instead used as a reducing agent in blast furnaces. The results from this
scenario show that this form of recycling brings fewer benefits than mechanical recycling. The four cases for
which pyrolysis are analysed suggest that pyrolysis is less energy-demanding than recycling. These scenarios
receive large primary energy benefits from avoiding the production of petrochemical products.
Figure 18 unambiguously highlights that incineration performs better than landfill but worse than pyrolysis.
Indeed, landfill has low energy requirements but receives fewer credits for avoided impacts. Some studies do not
assume any energy production from biogas (studies no 2 and 4). This explains why incineration performs 700%
better than landfill for case 4[MIX].
Table 31 Relative difference between the impacts from the different end-of-life options vs. recycling for energy demand for plastics. A positive
value means that recycling is preferable to the other end-of-life option. A negative value means that recycling causes more environmental impact
than the other end-of-life option
N° case 1[PE] 1[PET] 2[MIX1] 2[MIX2] 2[MIX3] 2[MIX4] 3[PE] 3[PP] 3[PS] 3[PET] 3[PVC]
Incineration with energy recovery 60% 80% 10% ‐100% 10% ‐100% 30% 10% 20% 70% 30%
Landfill 100% 100% 100% 110% 100% 110% 70% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Pyrolysis ‐40% ‐200% ‐50% ‐210%Recycling versus other alternativesN° case 4[MIX] 6[HDPE] 6[LDPE] 6[PET] 7[PET] 7[PE] 7[PVC] 8[PS1] 8[PS2] 8[PS3]
Incineration with energy recovery 220% 90% 90% 90% ‐10% 60% 150%
Landfill 1050% 100% 100% 100% 110% 110% 120%
PyrolysisRecycling versus other alternativesStudy n°5 does not include a comparison with recycling for this indicator and thus is not included in this table*
*
- Feedstock recycling scenario
Table 32 Relative difference between the impacts from the different end-of-life options vs. incineration with energy recovery for energy demand
for plastics. A positive value means that incineration is preferable to the other end-of-life option. A negative value means that incineration causes
more environmental impact than the other end-of-life option.
N° case 1[PE] 1[PET] 2[MIX1] 2[MIX2] 2[MIX3] 2[MIX4] 3[PE] 3[PP] 3[PS] 3[PET] 3[PVC]
Recycling ‐130% ‐360% ‐10% 50% ‐10% 50% ‐40% ‐10% ‐30% ‐210% ‐40%
Landfill 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 60% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Pyrolysis ‐50% ‐50% ‐60% ‐60%Incineration with energy recoveryversus other alternativesN° case 4[MIX] 6[HDPE] 6[LDPE] 6[PET] 8[PS1] 8[PS2] 8[PS3]
Recycling ‐180% ‐700% ‐780% ‐1570% 10% ‐40% ‐60%
Landfill 700% 110% 110% 120%
PyrolysisIncineration versus other alternativesStudies n°5 and 7 do not include a comparison with incineration with energy recovery for this indicator
and thus are not included in this table*
*- Feedstock recycling scenario