TITLE:
Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost of Waste Management—Plastic Cable Waste
AUTHORS:
Mats Zackrisson, Christina Jönsson, Elisabeth Olsson
KEYWORDS:
Cable Recycling, Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, Life Cycle Cost, LCC, Economic Analysis, Climate Impact, Waste Recycling
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science,
Vol.4 No.2,
April
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: The main
driver for recycling cable wastes is the high value of the conducting metal,
while the plastic with its lower value is often neglected. New improved cable
plastic recycling routes can provide both economic and environmental incentive
to cable producers for moving up the “cable plastic waste ladder”.
Cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment, LCA, of the waste management of the cable
scrap is suggested and explained as a method to analyze the pros and cons of
different cable scrap recycling options at hand. Economic and environmental
data about different recycling processes and other relevant processes and
materials are given. Cable producers can use this data and method to assess the
way they deal with the cable plastic waste today and compare it with available
alternatives and thus illuminate the improvement potential of recycling cable
plastic waste both in an environmental and in an economic sense. The
methodology applied consists of: cradle-to-gate LCA for waste material to a
recycled material (recyclate); quantifying the climate impact for each step on
the waste ladder for the specific waste material; the use of economic and
climate impact data in parallel; climate impact presented as a span to portray
the insecurities related to which material the waste will replace; and
possibilities for do-it-yourself calculations. Potentially, the methodology can
be useful also for other waste materials in the future.