Waste management indicators for Circular Economy: Comparison of collection and recycling rates

A key component of an industrial ecosystem is the mitigation of resource depletion through circulating material resources. Recycling rates (RR) are often used as an indicator for the degree of circularity of an economy.... [ view full abstract ]

A key component of an industrial ecosystem is the mitigation of resource depletion through circulating material resources. Recycling rates (RR) are often used as an indicator for the degree of circularity of an economy. National material recovery efficiencies, however, fail to reflect to which extent recycling activities manage to preserve material value or whether a loss of quality occurs. This study therefore aims at investigating the accuracy of official RR in Switzerland. For this, detailed MFA of the recycling fractions paper, cardboard, glass, PET, aluminium and tinplate were conducted in close collaboration with industry to compute collection rates (CR) and RR and to split these overall rates into closed-loop, open-loop and export rates. For PET, the closed-loop CR of 45% and the open-loop CR of 40% compare to a RR of 31% and 37%, respectively. Official rates for paper and cardboard are very high (97%), whereas the present study found CR of 69% and 88% and RR of 52% and 81% for paper and cardboard (including export). While the official rates were generally rather high compared to this study, they neglect metals and glass recycled after thermal treatments and therefore also underestimated the circularity for some materials. The aggregation of export, open- and closed-loop recycling in national RR makes it difficult to determine the net environmental benefit as they do not provide information on either quantity or quality of the final available resources or substituted materials. It might also be misleading to not differentiate between open- and closed-loop recycling if the ultimate goal is to close loops as targeted in a circular economy as, for example, outlined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Furthermore, by focusing solely on the collected quantities, the improvement potential of the recycling systems is hidden. Therefore, it could be beneficial to either communicate more differentiated information or to shift the focus to the output side of the recycling system (quantity and quality of recovered material). Furthermore, also materials recycled after thermal treatments should be included in circular economy targets. Splitting CR or RR into closed- and open-loop rates could provide a better starting point to assess the contribution of integrated waste management to circular economy.

Haupt, M., Vadenbo, C., & Hellweg, S. (2016). Do we have the right performance indicators for the circular economy? – Insight into the Swiss waste management system. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12506