Conditional Climate–Cost Trade-Offs and Transport Break-Even Conditions for Waste Flexible-Film Recycling Under Feedstock Quality Constraints
- 1College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
- 2Shanghai Tianqiang Environmental Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai 201415, China
Abstract
Feedstock quality and unequal process services complicate comparisons of waste flexible-film recycling routes. We linked records from 52 recyclers and 166 flows with 60 composition observations and separate polyethylene (PE) pelletization and mixed-feed (MIX) molding records. PE scenarios distinguished fixed feed from equal retained pellet output; MIX scenarios compared treatment of the same feed without assuming equivalent product function. Twelve PE batches yielded 38,226 kg of pellets from 40,796 kg of feed, with pooled electricity use of 439.8 kWh/t pellets. Industrial dry-cleaning electricity was treated as a threshold variable. At the MIX-06 reference setting, the covered climate impact of the extrusion reference exceeded molding by 23.5 kg CO2-eq/t feed; this difference ranged from −58.2 to 129.7 kg CO2-eq/t across engineering scenarios. Additional relative molding transport removed the climate and L2 cost margins at 150.5 and 34.0 km. L2 includes priced direct inputs, labor, maintenance and annualized equipment costs. Monthly throughput weighting yielded a candidate recorded flow interval of 2728.7–6605.2 t before deployment constraints. Route rankings depend on specified services, quality, capacity and feed supply. Unquantified services limit industrial interpretation, and unresolved resale links prevent interpreting regional endpoints as deduplicated physical savings.
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BibTeX
@article{yu2026conditional,
title = {{Conditional Climate–Cost Trade-Offs and Transport Break-Even Conditions for Waste Flexible-Film Recycling Under Feedstock Quality Constraints}},
author = {Chaojie Yu and Junqing Xu and Xichao Hu and Haochen Zhu and Guangming Li},
journal = {Polymers},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3390/polym18212646},
url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/18/21/2646},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Conditional Climate–Cost Trade-Offs and Transport Break-Even Conditions for Waste Flexible-Film Recycling Under Feedstock Quality Constraints
AU - Chaojie Yu
AU - Junqing Xu
AU - Xichao Hu
AU - Haochen Zhu
AU - Guangming Li
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/25
JO - Polymers
DO - 10.3390/polym18212646
UR - https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/18/21/2646
AB - Feedstock quality and unequal process services complicate comparisons of waste flexible-film recycling routes. We linked records from 52 recyclers and 166 flows with 60 composition observations and separate polyethylene (PE) pelletization and mixed-feed (MIX) molding records. PE scenarios distinguished fixed feed from equal retained pellet output; MIX scenarios compared treatment of the same feed without assuming equivalent product function. Twelve PE batches yielded 38,226 kg of pellets from 40,796 kg of feed, with pooled electricity use of 439.8 kWh/t pellets. Industrial dry-cleaning electricity was treated as a threshold variable. At the MIX-06 reference setting, the covered climate impact of the extrusion reference exceeded molding by 23.5 kg CO2-eq/t feed; this difference ranged from −58.2 to 129.7 kg CO2-eq/t across engineering scenarios. Additional relative molding transport removed the climate and L2 cost margins at 150.5 and 34.0 km. L2 includes priced direct inputs, labor, maintenance and annualized equipment costs. Monthly throughput weighting yielded a candidate recorded flow interval of 2728.7–6605.2 t before deployment constraints. Route rankings depend on specified services, quality, capacity and feed supply. Unquantified services limit industrial interpretation, and unresolved resale links prevent interpreting regional endpoints as deduplicated physical savings.
SN - 2073-4360
ER -