A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies in Plastic Waste Management

The world is facing socio-economic, environmental, and health challenges because of plastic pollution. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that selected treatment methods used in plastic waste management do not create unforeseen environmental challenges that add to the burden of the plastic waste problem. This study aims to determine the volume of literature (academic and grey literature) published thus far on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of plastic waste management (PWM) methods and assess their geographical scope, evaluated processes and software and characterisation methods that can be used in LCA studies. This was done by conducting a scoping review which yielded 45 studies for literature synthesis. Results show that gaps in LCA studies involving PWM still exist in Africa and other regions except for Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia. Further, most authors agree that mechanical recycling benefits the environment under certain conditions. Therefore, it should be promoted while simultaneously working towards finding other complementary methods, such as chemical recycling.