Intermediate Bulk Containers Re-use in the Circular Economy: An LCA Evaluation

The transition towards a circular economy, where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained for as long as possible, is an essential contribution to the European Union's efforts to develop a sustainable economy. Re-use of packaging items plays a key role in the achievement of this goal.The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts associated to the life cycle of Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBCs) as the number of uses (the so-called "rotations") changes, by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology.The results of the contribution analysis show that the impacts of the life cycle of IBCs mainly come from the IBCs manufacturing, whereas the reconditioning process accounts for less than 20% of the overall impacts. Moreover, the system where IBCs are reconditioned and re-used has better environmental performance than the system where IBCs are used only once and then sent to recycling/disposal. The advantages of such a system increase with the number of rotations. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.