Implications of the Circular Economy in the Context of Plastic Recycling: The Case Study of Opaque PET.

The use of recycled opaque PET (r-O-PET, with TiO) as a reinforcement for the recycled polypropylene matrix (r-PP) was evaluated through the life cycle assessment according to different scenarios corresponding to two different recycled blends and considered two virgin raw plastic material as reference materials when comparing the environmental performance of the proposed treatments. The results indicate that the environmental performance was quite different for each blend, since the additional extrusion process required in scenario 2 (blend with TiO) causes all impact categories analysed to report higher values when compared with scenario 1 (blend without TiO). The stage that contributes the most corresponds to the different extrusion processes included in both recycling blends, representing at least 80% of the total for global warming.