Carbon Footprint of Single-Use Plastic Items and Their Substitution

Luca Di Paolo, Simona Abbate, Eliseo Celani, Davide Di Battista () and Giovanni Candeloro
Additional contact information
Luca Di Paolo: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Simona Abbate: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Eliseo Celani: Plastic Free Certification s.b.r.l., 64020 Bellante, Italy
Davide Di Battista: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Giovanni Candeloro: Plastic Free Certification s.b.r.l., 64020 Bellante, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-16

Abstract: Single-use plastic is having a significant environmental impact and its reduction is a mandatory step to reduce plastic pollution worldwide. Indeed, the time that a plastic item can persist in the environment is very long and it is well known that it can produce devastating effects in particular in seas and oceans. Moreover, production, use and disposal of plastic items have a significant impact also on the greenhouse effect; this can be estimated in a life cycle approach, by evaluating their carbon footprint. In this work, a review of the carbon footprint evaluation of different single-use plastic categories has been carried out, developing a methodology to immediately evaluate the benefits related to their substitution with compostable and bio-plastic and/or multiple-use items and materials. The result of the novel methodology developed is a certain number of matrixes, which can categorize impact values in order to compare them with replacement with bio-based plastic materials or multi-use things. Finally, the methodology was tested and validated through a case study, where a plastic reduction plan was proposed and implemented and the CO 2 equivalent reduction was assessed, demonstrating a reduction potential related to a replacement by bioplastic or other materials equal, respectively, to 73% and 90%.

Keywords: carbon footprint; single-use plastic; LCA; plastic free (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16563/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16563/ (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:14:y:2022:i:24:p:16563-:d:999368

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 ().