Page 67 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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Another waste issue is litter, which does not lend itself easily to LCA, but which has been
incorporated into LCA studies of waste. Keep Australia Beautiful has recorded that more items
are being littered. Samples collected from beaches, car parks, highways, industrial areas, recrea-
2
tional parks, residential and retail areas and shopping centres show that 74 items per 1000 m
2
are being littered compared with 70 items per 1000 m in their 2005/06 survey (McGregor Tan
Research 2007). One littered item that has received particular attention in recent years is the
humble high density polyethylene (HDPE) single-use shopping bag. This lightweight, although
strong, material has helped many a shopper bring home their groceries, but once littered
becomes an aesthetic issue when entangled on fences and in vegetation, and poses risks to
aquatic and marine life of entanglement, ingestion and suffocation. In 2002, the debate around
HDPE bags in Australia took a high public profile, prompted by the suggestion from Ron Clarke,
a well-known athlete then representing the Council for Encouragement of Philanthropy, that a
levy should be placed on shopping bags to reduce their consumption (at the time estimated to
be 6.9 billion bags per year in Australia). Different types of degradable polymers were also
entering the market and being touted as the ‘solution’ to plastic bag consumption. Streamlined
LCAs of HDPE bags with alternatives such as paper and reusable bags and bags made from
degradable polymers formed part of the studies commissioned by the Australian Department of
Environment and Heritage (see Section 6.2.4).

6.2 Case studies in LCA application in waste policy
There have been several applications of LCA to waste management. The following case studies
illustrate how LCA has been applied to municipal waste and its treatment.

6.2.1 Case study 1: the benefits of recycling paper and packaging waste
In common with LCA in many other applications, waste management studies invariably pose
challenges for the collection of specific data and for the appropriate interpretation and applica-
tion of findings. In a study on the kerbside collection of paper and packaging commissioned by
EcoRecycle Victoria (now Sustainability Victoria) (Grant et al. 2001), the state department
responsible for waste policy, a need was identified to collect specific Australian data on waste
collection, reprocessing and management. There was public support for recycling, but no sci-
entific data to show if there were environmental benefits. The solution was to engage with
industry stakeholders through an Industry Advisory Committee, and across the three princi-
pal research groups involved: the Centre for Design at RMIT University; the Centre for Pack-
aging, Transportation and Storage at Victoria University (part of the Co-operative Research
Centre (CRC) for International Food Manufacture and Packaging Science); and the Centre for
Water and Waste Technology at the University of NSW (part of the CRC for Waste Manage-
ment and Pollution Control). This process ensured that any concerns or questions regarding
the LCA methodology or data collection were recognised in a timely manner and dealt with
appropriately. It further assisted in the collection of life cycle inventory data and in creating
ownership by industry of the study’s outcomes (James et al. 2002).
In 1998, EcoRecycle Victoria commissioned a study to investigate the life cycle impacts of
domestic waste management: ‘Life Cycle Assessment for Paper and Packaging Waste Manage-
ment Scenarios in Victoria’. It was conducted in two stages. The first stage investigated the
landfilling and recycling of glass, PET and steel (Grant et al. 1999). The second stage expanded
the focus to investigate the entire range of paper and packaging materials presented by the
consumer at the kerbside (Grant et al. 2001). This case study focuses on the second stage as it
investigated all current packaging materials: paper and board (i.e. corrugated containers and
box-board), liquidpaperboard (LPB) gable top and aseptic cartons, HDPE bottles, polyvinyl

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