Economic analysis of plastic recycling system based on the wastes distribution

Abstract

The economic analysis of plastic recycling system presented in this study takes into account fractionation, collection, and processing of plastic waste in residential and commercial sectors. Especially the plastics-waste collection has been modeled quantitatively by using the regional mesh statistics and the reports on office survey provided by the Japanese government. Various kinds of plastics-recycling processes are evaluated from the viewpoint of both life-cycle energy and economics. The evaluation results show that the PET reclamation has good performance of energy saving, but it takes a lot of cost for collection, so this technology is not economically acceptable even if the recycled resin has the same value as the virgin one. Cost reduction is possible by decreasing the labor hours for plastics collection. Furthermore, some measures for voluntary collection of PET containers are most effective if the government thinks the plastics recycling is preferable from the viewpoint of the local and global environment.