Life cycle assessment of a packaging waste recycling system in Portugal

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to assess the environmental impacts associated with an activity or product life cycle. It has also been applied to assess the environmental performance related to waste management activities. This study analyses the packaging waste management system of a local public authority in Portugal. The operations of selective and refuse collection, sorting, recycling, landfilling and incineration of packaging waste were considered. The packaging waste management system in operation in 2010, which we called ‘Baseline’ scenario, was compared with two hypothetical scenarios where all the packaging waste that was selectively collected in 2010 would undergo the refuse collection system and would be sent directly to incineration (called ‘Incineration’ scenario) or to landfill (‘Landfill’ scenario). Overall, the results show that the ‘Baseline’ scenario is more environmentally sound than the hypothetical scenarios.