An End-of-Life Plastic and Additive Flow Tracker Tool for Scenario Forecasting

Plastics are widely used for their affordability and versatility in various applications. However, the end-of-life (EoL) management stage can often lead to the release of hazardous chemical additives and degradation products into the environment, which leads to ecological and human exposure risks. The increasing demand for plastics is expected to escalate the frequency of material releases during plastic EoL management activities, creating a challenge for policymakers, consumers, manufacturers, and communities to ensure proper material segregation, reuse, recycling, and disposal. Effective management is crucial for achieving a safer and sustainable circular economy (CE) for plastics, enhancing recycling efficiency and promoting material reuse. End-of-life plastic research efforts often overlook chemical additives, which are crucial for understanding the environmental and health implications of plastic usage. Therefore, chemical additive content and release must be assessed and considered when designing and implementing technologies, supply chains, incentives, and regulations for plastic CE management solutions. This research offers a Python-based EoL plastic and additive flow tracker tool (EoLPAFT) to support decision-makers in analyzing the holistic impacts and benefits of potential plastic EoL management solutions, considering the chemical additives within EoL plastics, their releases, and occupational exposure scenarios. The utility of the tool was tested through two hypothetical case scenarios, including (1) nationwide adoption of an extended producer responsibility (EPR) program and (2) maintaining a CE for plastic. The analyses projected by the tool can ease the prediction of long-term outcomes, offering technical knowledge and insight for policymakers and stakeholders seeking to minimize the environmental, social, economic, and health impacts of plastic pollution while seeking a safer and more sustainable CE of plastics considering chemical additives.