Sustainability analysis of packaging waste management systems: A case study in the Romanian context

Packaging waste is an important waste stream being directly linked to any product or good that consumers buy, use and then discard. Beyond policies setting recycling and recovery targets and the usual waste indicators in terms of generation, collection and treatment, packaging waste should be analyzed from the sustainability perspective. For countries in which municipal solid waste management has modest performances and packaging waste is organized solely based on Extended Producer Responsibility principle, such as Romania, this type of analysis is even more significant. Starting with 2018 onwards, the legislative European framework have set stringent packaging waste recovery and recycling targets, however beyond their achievement, it is important to also check what is the mid-term impact on sustainability at the member states level. Firstly, the study investigates multiple data sources (Environmental Fund Administration-EFA, Eurostat and National Waste Management Plan) to have a complete overview on the packaging waste generation and technical performances. Secondly, the US EPA WARM methodology was selected to perform the analysis. The indicators set within the methodology are the main indicatives for the environmental impacts and the socio-economic aspects in the end of life management operations, namely: greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, together with number of full-time jobs, wages and taxes. Throughout 5 proposed scenarios, the impact of packaging waste quantities variations on the sustainability results could be observed. Irrespective of the scenario, when the overall packaging waste generated quantities are within 1.88 up to 2.14 million tons, the sustainability profile limits give results for environmental indicators within the following ranges: greenhouse gas emissions -3.75 x 106 - -1.4 x 106 tons CO2e/year, energy use -2.9 x 107 - -1.1 x 107 GJ/year, social indicator: 5823-14368 full time jobs and economic indicators: 328 x 106 - 692 x 106 US $/year in wages and 56.7 x 106 - 136.7 x 106 US $/year in taxes. Beside the overall packaging waste sustainability profiles, specific packaging waste material streams, namely polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and aluminium sustainability profiles were obtained. For the entire packaging waste system, compared with the other scenarios, the sustainability profile for the EFA scenario has indicated the lowest environmental impact and the highest positive impact for the socio-economic indicators (with 2018 registering the best results). For both PET and aluminium packaging waste systems, in the EFA scenario, 2019 has been the year with the lowest performance (highest environmental impact and lowest values for the socio-economic indicators).