Life Cycle Assessment of Bioplastics and Food Waste Disposal Methods

Shakira R. Hobbs, Tyler M. Harris, William J. Barr and Amy E. Landis
Additional contact information
Shakira R. Hobbs: Civil Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA
Tyler M. Harris: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA
William J. Barr: School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85004, USA
Amy E. Landis: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-14

Abstract: The environmental impacts of five waste management scenarios for polylactic acid (PLA)-based bioplastics and food waste were quantified using life cycle assessment. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated the potential for a pretreatment process to accelerate the degradation of bioplastics and were modeled in two of the five scenarios assessed. The five scenarios analyzed in this study were: (1a) Anaerobic digestion (1b) Anaerobic digestion with pretreatment; (2a) Compost; (2a) Compost with pretreatment; (3) Landfill. Results suggested that food waste and pretreated bioplastics disposed of with an anaerobic digester offers life cycle and environmental net total benefits (environmental advantages/offsets) in several areas: ecotoxicity (−81.38 CTUe), eutrophication (0 kg N eq), cumulative energy demand (−1.79 MJ), global warming potential (0.19 kg CO 2 ), and human health non-carcinogenic (−2.52 CTuh). Normalized results across all impact categories show that anaerobically digesting food waste and bioplastics offer the most offsets for ecotoxicity, eutrophication, cumulative energy demand and non-carcinogenic. Implications from this study can lead to nutrient and energy recovery from an anaerobic digester that can diversify the types of fertilizers and decrease landfill waste while decreasing dependency on non-renewable technologies. Thus, using anaerobic digestion to manage bioplastics and food waste should be further explored as a viable and sustainable solution for waste management.

Keywords: bioplastics; disposal; LCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6894/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6894/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6894-:d:577416

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().