Plastic sport equipment assessment: conciliate LCA and MFA

Main Presenter:    Madeline Laire-Levrier 

Co-Authors:   Carole Charbuillet     Carola Guyot-Phung      Nicolas Perry                                    

The technical properties required for sports equipment call for material innovations, for which engineering plastics and resins are often the answer. That is why Sport and Leisure Goods (SLG) are mainly made of multi-materials.

But the use of those material leads to environmental and sanitary issues (resource consumption, climate changing, pollution, toxicity, …). To remedy these challenges, the end-of-life management of SLG has been included in the French extended producer responsibility schemes (EPR).[1] Therefore, strategies for greater circularity rely on measuring the different impacts at each life step of the products. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is largely used for decision support, presents limits as impact transfer over several life cycles. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) can be used as a complementary tool to have a sectorial approach and help quantify the flow of materials contained in the SLG system.[2] As the practice of a sport also highly depends on the local area (mountain, coastline, …), the territory is also important to take into account. Combining both LCA and MFA makes us understand the products or territories that requires prior attention.

SLG designers lack data to build the expected circularity strategies. This sector produces items that can be very complex, either in terms of the materials used or their design, and that are produced in small quantities and are non-standardized. French Producer Responsibility Organizer (PROs) and ADEME can gather data about product launches and waste collection, but these data need to be put in relation together to identify areas that need further investigation on the product lifecycle.

Our work consists in designing a strong methodology to make data reliable and consistent for decision makers. Along with LCA, we use MFA for data reconciliation in order to highlight hidden information or information dearth. SLG are categorized into similar patterns to facilitate end-of-life management and circularity strategies. Stakeholders (raw material suppliers, producers, users, waste management actors and recyclers) are involved in this research as the recent EPR scheme in this industry raises new questions, and foster cooperation.

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