IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/18519_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Material flow analysis of recycling systems

In: Handbook of the Circular Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Schmidt
  • David Laner

Abstract

Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is the central tool to investigate resource use patterns and identify recycling potentials as well as losses throughout the material life cycle. In this work, the use of MFA and MFA-based indicators as a means to assess the circularity of waste and recycling systems is illustrated. First, a brief description of MFA methodology is provided and selected MFA-based material efficiency indicators are defined in a consistent manner to assess the performance of recycling systems. Subsequently, a case study on PET beverage bottle management in Germany is used to illustrate MFA-based material efficiency assessment and to highlight the relevance and limitations of different indicators. The case study results show that beverage bottle recycling in Germany is characterized by already high collection and recycling rates, but that significant potentials for improvement remain regarding qualitative aspects of PET recycling.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Schmidt & David Laner, 2020. "Material flow analysis of recycling systems," Chapters, in: Miguel Brandão & David Lazarevic & Göran Finnveden (ed.), Handbook of the Circular Economy, chapter 8, pages 89-98, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:18519_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788972710/9781788972710.00016.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:18519_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.