Circular Economy to Address Plastic and Agricultural Waste

• #Circular Economy
• #Life Cycle
• #Research
• #Waste Management

• Share it:

At the 14th International Conference LCAFood 2024, the world’s leading forum on sustainable food, Dr Alba Bala, Executive Director of the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change at ESCI-UPF presented a poster showing the results of the CICEP project in which the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change at ESCI-UPF participates. The conference provided an exceptional platform for further discussion on sustainability and innovation in the food and food waste industries.

CICEP Project: Circular Economy Action in Island Regions through the Valorisation of Plastic and Agricultural Waste

Growing concerns about plastic pollution highlight the need for sustainable waste management, especially in regions lacking proper infrastructure like the Canary Islands, Spain. To address this issue, this project focuses on recycling plastics and reusing waste from banana farming, following the principles of a circular economy. Researchers aim to reduce environmental and social impacts by converting banana stalks and plastic caps into valuable products, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the process from start to finish.

The technology extracts long and short fibres from banana waste to mix with plastic residues. A Social Hotspot analysis identifies potential social risks, while environmental impact is measured using the EF3.0 method and Gabi software. The banana stalk fibre market in the Canary Islands is projected to be worth between 12.24 and 15.30 million euros annually. In this poster entitled “Circular Economy for Food and Environmental Sustainability: Integrating Plastic Recycling and Banana Waste Valorization in the Canary Islands (Spain) through LCA” different environmental scenarios are compared, showing that a 50% long fibre and 50% recycled plastic mix has higher environmental impacts in some indicators compared to a 100% recycled plastic scenario. This work is in the framework of the CICEP project TED2021-131039B-C33, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR project coordinated by the ULPGC and with the participation of partners from the University of Girona (UdG) and ESCI-UPF, as well as the Politecnico di Milano in the calculation of social impacts.

Key partners in this initiative include:

• University of Girona (UdG) | LEPAMAP Prodis

• University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) | Integrated and Advanced Manufacturing of the School of Industrial and Civil Engineering

• UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change at ESCI-UPF

• Collaboration with Politecnico Milano | Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale