Life Cycle Assessment of Common Used Agricultural Plastic Products in the EU

Agriculture Plastic Waste (APW) generates about 615.000 tons of waste per year in Europe. This presents a serious challenge concerning the production of the plastic as well as the disposal or recycling of the materials. For addressing especially the specific issues of APW the European Commission funds a project called LABELAGRIWASTE, labelling agricultural plastic waste for valorising the waste stream. In the consortium partners from Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain are working together on developing a labelling scheme for European APW. In order to identify the environmental impact of the main agricultural plastic products, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed. The LCA is done before the development of a labelling scheme starts to examine the different life cycles of the most commonly used products in agriculture in Europe. The study includes the LCA of mulch films, pipes, and greenhouse films, each with two different plastics and different End-of-Life options. Also differences in four countries and the European Union in total are investigated. Furthermore, the LCA includes the production of the plastics and the following different End-of-Life scenarios: Mechanical Recycling, Landfill and Incineration. As a result the environmental profiles of different materials with various End-of-Life (EoL) options are generated. The environmental categories Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) and additionally the Primary Energy consumption are shown. The results are varying depending on the End-of-Life option, the country and of course the material studied. This paper presents the results for the Life Cycle of mulch film including the production and different EoL options for the Global Warming Potential.