Environmentally weighted recycling quotes-better justifiable and environmentally more correct

This paper presents a new approach in calculating recycling quotes. The different material fractions of a product are weighed on an environmental basis: environmentally weighted recycling quotes (EWRQ). They reflect accurately how much of the product is actually recovered in environmental terms and what the environmental impact of end-of-life treatment itself is. For the determination of EWRQ, the recovery percentage of the processing techniques and the associated eco-indicators for recycling or treatment of nonrecovered material fractions are based on the Dutch Eco-indicator ´95 method. A normalisation step is used to obtain environmentally weighted recycling quotes on a scale from 0% to 100%. The new approach of EWRQ has been applied to several case studies to compare with application of the traditional weight-based material recycling efficiency (MRE). Results show that the conventional MRE, often used in take-back and recycling discussions, does not reflect the real environmental performance of a product´s end-of-life treatment. This means that targets set in proposed take-back schemes should be revised