Welcome to a webinar with results from the project “Incentives for energy recovery in LCA for plastics”. Tomas Ekvall, Chalmers University of Technology, will present the project and its results, together with Maja Nellström and Marie Gottfridsson, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. The presentations will be followed by questions from and discussion with attendees at the webinar.

The project “Incentives for energy recovery in LCA for plastics” (funded by the Swedish Envionrmantal Protection Agency) builds on the recently reported project “Modeling of recycling” (funded by Re:Source), which aimed to analyzing and debating how to model recycling in life cycle assessments (LCA) and similar environmental assessments. The project team found a risk that LCA can give wrong incentives, favoring energy recovery over material recycling. In the current project, the aim is to investigate to which extent this is a problem for waste plastics and if a closer look on how to model energy recovery can solve the problem. The focus is on the methods for Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). The possible solutions investigated includes Factor B in the PEF methodology, but also a wider systems perspective on energy recovery that includes impacts on the imports of waste and related impacts on the waste management in other European countries.

The webinar is directed to researchers, industry and policy-makers with an interest in the PEF methodology and/or in how to model waste management in LCA.

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