Life cycle assessment of filament production in distributed plastic recycling via additive manufacturing

Distributed recycling via additive manufacturing (DRAM) emphasizes an emerging approach to locally recycle waste plastic by 3D-printing it into valuable products. Although major progress has been reported in the last decade to validate the technical feasibility, and economic viability of the DRAM as an unitary operation, the environmental evaluation of this approach is still at its early stage as a distributed recycling network. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental impact of a DRAM unit as a baseline scenario, compared to two scenarios of the virgin supply chain plastic filament used in the printing process. To achieve this goal, a comparative environmental performance using a life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed to estimate the multidimensional potential impacts of virgin and recycled polylactic acid (PLA). The study takes place using a physical recycling demonstrator developed at a university in Nancy, France. Four impact categories were considered: climate change, potential eutrophication (Freshwater and Marine), resource depletion (Fossil and Water), and ion radiation. For the first three impact categories, the results demonstrate a minimum 97% reduction in environmental impact compared to a virgin supply chain. However, in terms of ion radiation, the amount of emissions is approximately 2.8 times higher than that of the virgin plastic scenario. This increase is mainly due to the specific situation in France, where most of the energy is generated using nuclear means. This study aims to expand on the environmental assessment of the plastic recycling network system to better understand the implementation of these systems for waste plastic management, which can help extend the lifetime of plastic material. The findings provide an environmental overview of the benefits and disadvantages of developing a DRAM system in a particular context.