Circular economy of expanded polystyrene container production: Environmental benefits of household waste recycling considering renewable energies

Plastic industry is ubiquitous worldwide, and the generation of “plastic waste” has been steadily increasing to the point of being considered a high impact pollutant. The expanded polystyrene (EPS) plastic industry aware of the issue is interested on trying recycling post-consumer material. Through a recent study made in an alliance between the private sector and the academy, the feasibility of the EPS “mechanical” recycling was proven; therefore, a possible solution through a circular economy model. The aim of the present paper was to investigate the potential environmental impacts avoided by the circular economy scenario previously developed, through a life cycle assessment (LCA) performed for the city of Guayaquil, where 64% of all the plastic manufacturing industries in the country are located. The entire life cycle of 1.00 kg of 5 × 5 inch. food containers were assessed from the production stage until its end-of-life stage: focusing on three different valorization paths, circular economy closed-loop (container-to-container) proposal with electricity share of 2019 and another with the 2027 future one, and traditional linear economy (container-to-landfill). Results showed that the scenario C that considers the recycling of post-consumer EPS waste and the electricity share proposed for 2027 have lower impacts in 14 out of 16 categories, in specific for the Land use (−31%), Ozone Depletion (−28%), Acidification (−24%) and Terrestrial and Marine Eutrophication (−21%). These results strongly suggest that the recycling of these kind of plastic waste could benefit the environment greatly.