Resources, Conservation and Recycling
Received 4 February 2021, Revised 23 November 2021, Accepted 23 November 2021, Available online 4 December 2021
Andrea MartinoAmadei, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milano 20133, Ital

Table of Contents

Highlights

• EU citizens have a plastic footprint of between 84 and 129 kg per capita per year (2004).
• The packaging sector and three polymers (LDPE, PP and PET) dominate plastic flows.
• Plastic footprint estimates are compared based on literature data and consumption statistics.
• Estimates of littering potential per product are provided based on beach litter data.
• Plastic footprint and littering potential data are key for EU policy prioritization of intervention.

1.1. Approaches for quantifying plastic flows

• However, no standard methodology to measure the extent of the plastic problem is yet available.
• A review of approaches highlighted a predominance of methodologies focusing on the assessment of plastic usage, waste or recycling rates, with little focus on circularity (Boucher et al., 2019).
• Literature assessed plastic flows and stock adopting MFA or PMFA (probabilistic MFA): Sustainable cycles and management of plastics: a brief review of RCR publications in 2019 and early 2020; at global level; for EU; at country level: Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Finland, India (December 2005), China (November 2019), Trinidad and Tobago; the newest one for EU28 (December 2020); an EN report supporting Circular Plastic Alliance goal of 10 million tonnes (November 2020)
• Plastic-related emissions: The ‘Plastic Leak Project’ (PLP) (leakage of both micro- and macro-plastic products, bottom-up); an UN programme (Mapping of global plastics value chain and plastics losses to the environment, top-down).

1.2. Scope and objectives

This paper aims at modelling the plastic footprint of EU for 2014 and addresses the likelihood of plastic to become marine litter

2. Materials and methods

This study is structured in three main steps：(a) literature-based EU plastic footprint (Section 2.1), (b) consumption statistics-based EU plastic footprint (i.e., derived from consumption statistics; Eurostat, 2020a) (Section 2.2), and (c) calculation of marine litter likelihood based on the EU beach litter database (Addamo et al., 2018; Hanke et al., 2019) (Section 2.3). Fig. 1 distinguishes these three steps by colours and illustrates their various interlinkages.

Fig. 1. Methodological approach of the study.

2.1.3. Plastic flow database

• Based on 11 reference studies.
• data on healthcare sector is added, including syringes, disposal gloves and infusion bags.
• complement data on fishing sector calculating with various polymer content ratios.

2.1.4. Literature-based EU plastic footprint

Assuming that the percentage of one country’s plastic footprint in a specific year on EU in 2004 is in direct proportion to the percentage of its GDP of that year on EU 2004.

2.2. Consumption statistics-based EU plastic footprint

Plastic footprint equals product consumption multiplied by plastic content share (all from PRODCOM database) after transferring to mass units and allocating to different economic sectors as its share.

2.3. Assessment of marine litter potential

Marine litter rate is calculated by upscale (20 times, linear extension with the coastal length) EU observed beach litter data (EU report) and divided by total EU consumption data.

3.Results

Fig. 2. Literature-based EU plastic footprint (average) and consumption statistics-based EU plastic footprint for 2014, by economic sector [kg/person] (Electrical and Electronic Equipment = EEE).

Table 1. Relative contribution of each economic sector to the EU plastic footprint [%], by economic sector and modeling approach (year 2014). (Electrical and Electronic Equipment = EEE).

Fig. 5. Trend of the consumption statistics-based plastic consumption as calculated from PRODCOM (Eurostat, 2020a) for the years from 2010 to 2019 [kg/person]. (Electrical and Electronic Equipment = EEE).