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Circular Economy 2023, 2(2): 100037 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cec.2023.100037
Research Article | Open Access | Issue | Published: 24 March 2023

Supply chain plastic footprint analysis

Show Author's Information Yijie Liua,b,  Jiarong Laic,  Shijun Maa,d,  Qian Fenga,e,  Guang Yanga,d,  Zhilan Zhaoa,  Jianxin Yanga,d,  Chuanbin Zhoua,d( )
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Center for Strategic Studies, Chinese Academy of Engineering, Beijing 100088, China
World Wide Fund for Nature, Beijing 100009, China
College of Resource and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
School of Resources & Environment and Safety Engineering, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, China
Keywords:
Life cycle assessment, Supply chain, Material flow analysis, Plastic consumption, Plastic footprint
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Liu Y, Lai J, Ma S, et al. Supply chain plastic footprint analysis. Circular Economy, 2023, 2(2): 100037. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cec.2023.100037
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Plastic is one of the most basic materials for many industries. Enterprise, as an important stakeholder in plastic pollution control, still lack methodology for investigating the performance of mitigating its plastic pollution. In this work, we proposed a methodology, integrating material flow analysis, life cycle analysis, and scenario analysis for analyzing plastic footprint (incl., material and environmental footprint) at enterprise level and from the perspective of supply chain. A clothing enterprise was chosen as the studied case, and three pathways of plastic reduction were analyzed, incl., reducing unnecessary plastic packaging, using alternative materials, and using recycled materials. The indexes of the plastic footprint of the case enterprise were obtained. In 2019, the weight of plastic packaging used by the case enterprise was 1,949.10 t. The average weight of plastic packaging used for each garment was 19.67 g. The weight of plastic packaging consumed per 10,000 USD of revenue was 0.25 kg. It was found that promoting lightweight plastic materials in supply chain (~14% reduction in thickness of plastic packaging bags), reducing unnecessary plastic use within the enterprise, increasing the number of plastic packaging cycles (~50% reused), and using recycled plastic materials (~15%) are effective ways for enterprises to achieve environmental benefits.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Supply chain plastic footprint analysis

Show Author's information Yijie Liua,b, Jiarong Laic, Shijun Maa,d, Qian Fenga,e, Guang Yanga,d, Zhilan Zhaoa, Jianxin Yanga,d, Chuanbin Zhoua,d( )
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Center for Strategic Studies, Chinese Academy of Engineering, Beijing 100088, China
World Wide Fund for Nature, Beijing 100009, China
College of Resource and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
School of Resources & Environment and Safety Engineering, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, China

Abstract

Plastic is one of the most basic materials for many industries. Enterprise, as an important stakeholder in plastic pollution control, still lack methodology for investigating the performance of mitigating its plastic pollution. In this work, we proposed a methodology, integrating material flow analysis, life cycle analysis, and scenario analysis for analyzing plastic footprint (incl., material and environmental footprint) at enterprise level and from the perspective of supply chain. A clothing enterprise was chosen as the studied case, and three pathways of plastic reduction were analyzed, incl., reducing unnecessary plastic packaging, using alternative materials, and using recycled materials. The indexes of the plastic footprint of the case enterprise were obtained. In 2019, the weight of plastic packaging used by the case enterprise was 1,949.10 t. The average weight of plastic packaging used for each garment was 19.67 g. The weight of plastic packaging consumed per 10,000 USD of revenue was 0.25 kg. It was found that promoting lightweight plastic materials in supply chain (~14% reduction in thickness of plastic packaging bags), reducing unnecessary plastic use within the enterprise, increasing the number of plastic packaging cycles (~50% reused), and using recycled plastic materials (~15%) are effective ways for enterprises to achieve environmental benefits.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment, Supply chain, Material flow analysis, Plastic consumption, Plastic footprint

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Publication history

Received: 27 November 2022
Revised: 05 February 2023
Accepted: 16 February 2023
Published: 24 March 2023
Issue date: June 2023

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© 2023 The Author(s).

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52000180) and the World Wide Fund of China (Grant No. OPV50F). The authors appreciate the great effort and support from the case enterprise, and the comments and suggestions from Prof. Feng Li and Mr. Xianhao Meng.

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This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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