Environmental life cycle assessment of the recycling processes of waste plastics recovered by landfill mining

Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) is a powerful tool for the sustainable management of landfill sites, aiming at both land reclamation and material recovery/reuse. To enhance the recovery and recycling rate of excavated plastic fractions, in most cases destined to energy recovery, new convenient, effective and sustainable strategies are needed. In this study, a recovery and valorization process of ELFM excavated plastics has been validated through an integrated experimental and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, demonstrating the environmental sustainability of the secondary raw material generated, in terms of use of resources and emissions generated. In particular, the secondary granulate from ELFM was compared with a virgin product and the last one resulted to have a higher impact (more than 4.46 times greater than the first one), in particular for the use of the resource crude oil as raw material in the production of primary LDPE. The valorization process of the excavated plastic made the mechanical properties of the secondary raw material comparable to that of a primary material.