Ökobilanzen zur Verwertung von Altkunststoffen aus Verkaufsverpackungen

For a long time plastic packaging was considered to be a major problem in the sales packaging sector because of the apparently limited number of recovery and recycling techniques. Today, the situation has changed dramatically: Used plastic packaging has now become a new raw material. Three different methods are available for recycling and recovering this packaging: Mechanical recycling, feedstock recycling and energy recovery. In compliance with the provisions of the German Packaging Ordinance, however, plastic packagiong collected by the Dual System may only be reycled using mechanical or feedstock techniques. In the recent past, the environmental impacts caused by the individual techniques have attracted much more attention, leading to controversial discussions in some cases. This study showes that the ecological significance is not, as is often falsely assumed, dependent on whether post-consumer plastics are recycled into their starting products. On the contrary, the efficiency with which primary resources are replaced with post-consumer plastics is of primary importance. The suitability of mechanical recycling, feedstock recycling and energy recovery techniques for this purpose naturally differs depending on the initial situation. Therefore it is impossible to make a global statement such as: Mechanical recycling is better than feedstock recycling.