Conference on Environmental Science and Technology

The mismanagement of post-consumer plastics poses a significant threat to human health and the environment. Plastics in the open environment blocks rivers and waterways increasing the risk of flooding and the proliferation of microplastics. These environmental issues prevail especially in developing countries. In the Philippines, there are different approaches in minimizing plastic wastes through waste diversion and recovery. However, the assessment of the potential useful life extension of plastics through recycling has still yet to be extensively conducted in the Philippines. This results in uncertainty among plastic product manufacturers on which recycled products can use plastics for a longer period or for multiple product life cycles, i.e., having a high potential product circularity. The absence of a comprehensive assessment tool focusing on the design phase of the product life cycle makes it difficult to achieve plastic circularity at the product level. A design-based product circularity assessment called Concept Circularity Evaluation Tool (CCET) was developed in 2020 by Albaek et al. This tool can be used for determining options for circularity by identifying improvement opportunities on the different stages of the product life cycle. Highly circular products from plastic wastes in the Philippines were determined through assessing the potential product circularity through a numerical score based on the CCET. A higher circularity score means that the product has a relatively longer useful life and can be used for more than one useful life among the products considered. Household furniture and construction products are considered in the assessment because these are the most common applications of recycling post-consumer plastic wastes in the Philippines. The increasing number of recycled plastic product manufacturers in the Philippines results in a more established plastic waste collection scheme and production of household furniture and construction products from plastic wastes. Among the household furniture products, compression-molded school chairs got the highest potential circularity score of 43.57. For the products used in the construction industry, eco-pavers obtained the highest circularity score of 32.95. The household furniture plastic products have a higher average circularity score. Although these products have shorter useful life than construction products, household furniture plastic products can still have higher level of circularity. Most of these products are made with higher plastic content compared to construction products which can have different material components such as aggregates and binders affecting the amount of plastic materials being recycled throughout their product useful life . The product circularity assessment can be made available through multi-stakeholder discussions among the manufacturers, members of the academe, government agencies, and local communities in identifying possible circularity improvement opportunities throughout the product lifecycle. The manufacturers can use the assessment to strategize their approach in developing their product by identifying which stage of the product lifecycle can be improved further and what products can have high circularity. However, the determination of potential circularity scores of upcycled plastic products is only a part of the entire decision-making of manufacturers during the product design and development phase. This assessment can be used in conjunction with quantitative product circularity assessment providing a more holistic approach in developing technical and data-driven product circularity assessment for products from post-consumer plastic waste.