Product name
Waste treatment of PET bottles, from households, put on market.
Reference flow unit
1 tonne PET bottles put on market.
System boundaries
Includes the collection of plastic packaging waste (PPW) by municipalities and further waste treatment. Separated PPW is transported by train to Germany for further sorting and recycling. Sorting residues are incinerated in Germany. PPW discarded in the residual waste bin is either sent to an mixed-waste MRF in Norway or incinerated at a local incineration plant in Norway. The inventory does not include avoided emissions because of secondary products substituting other products. PET bottles used for beverages are a part of the deposit refund scheme (DRS) in Norway and are not included in this dataset.
Use advice of the dataset
This dataset should be used when modelling treatment of PET bottles from household waste in Norway. If the purpose is to compare different waste treatment options (e.g. recycling and energy recovery), the avoided emissions should be included in each system. 1000 kg PET bottle material is used in the production of 24.7 kg PO, 1.5 kg PP, 73.4 kg PET and 1.5 kg HPDE granulate in addition to the production of 10415 MJ heat and 1556 MJ electricity in Norway and 2108 MJ heat and 1074 MJ electricity in Germany.
Technology description
PPW is either source separated by households or collected together with mixed waste and separated in a mixed-waste MRF afterward. In the dataset, 82% of the generated PPW is source separated, 18% is separated from mixed waste in a mixed-waste MRF. The separated PPW is sorted and recycled in three different facilities in Germany. More information about the facilities is available in Callewaert et al. (2023)
Quality level
Very good
Location
Norway
Geographical representativeness
The Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) managing the system covers 80% of Norway population, the remaining 20% of the population (mainly Oslo) is covered by another PRO which is not included in the dataset. Site specific data is collected for the mixed waste MRFs in Norway and for the three facilities in Germany. For the background processes, ecoinvent v3.9 cut-off is used.
Reference year
2020
Time representativeness
Generated amount of PET bottles is based on the generated amount of PPW and its composition. Source separation efficiency, transport data and division of PPW between different treatment facilities in Germany is from 2020.
References
Callewaert, P., Lerche Raadal, H. & Lyng, K.-A. (2023). How to achieve ambitious recycling targets for plastic packaging waste? The environmental impact of increased waste separation and sorting in Norway. Waste Management, 171, 218-226. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2023.08.037
Internal Project and process identifier
0b194587-089d-46cb-a431-e07b4147a461
