DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16728644
title: Life-cycle inventory (LCI) for assessing environmental impacts of plastic-waste treatment systems

description: OverviewThis repository provides a harmonised life-cycle inventory (LCI) framework for assessing the environmental impacts of plastic-waste treatment systems, including recycling, incineration with energy recovery, landfilling, open disposal, and international transport. The LCI is parameterised with country-specific electricity mixes and treatment technologies and can be combined with externally defined waste-flow scenarios, including those derived from international trade statistics.

The LCI framework underpins the published study “Shift to intra-EU-OECD trade enhanced environmental benefits after Basel Convention Plastic Waste Amendments” (Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2025), but is released here as a stand-alone, reusable research resource applicable to broader scenario-based LCA and MFA studies of plastic waste systems.

Contents

1. Trade-data processing and reconciliation





code_bc_z3.py: Python toolkit for data retrieval, reconciliation, and scenario analysis, including:





Retrieval of bilateral plastic-waste trade data from UN Comtrade




Harmonisation of yearly trade records and treatment of missing or zero mass values




Unit-price-weighted reconciliation of export–import reporting asymmetries




Country selection and trade-share calculation




Assignment of transport modes and construction of international transport routes




Scenario-based trade-flow visualisation and LCA preparation





2. Life-cycle inventory (LCI) for plastic-waste trade





LCI_model.xlsx: Parameterised LCI model for scenario-based LCA, including:





86 activities (75 waste-treatment, 11 international transport)




Activities drawn from ecoinvent 3.8, supplemented with assembled and parameterised processes




Country-specific electricity mixes, recycling technologies, incineration with energy recovery, and disposal pathways





The LCI is organised into the following sheets:





National electricity mix




Recycling and recycling-residue treatment




Virgin plastic production




Incineration (with uncertainty variants)




Sanitary landfill, unsanitary landfill, open dumping, and open burning




International transport




Parameter-scenarios and documentation notes



Scenario LCA is implemented using Activity Browser (Brightway-based).

The corresponding paper has been published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling on August 2, 2025.

For any issues with this repository, please contact: kai.li@om.rwth-aachen.de.

This repository contains the files that support the analysis presented in the paper:

code_bc_z3.py: python scripts for all the calculations and plots included in the affiliated paper. 

Sections include (refer to code cells; heading 1 included only):



Import packages

Functions and lists defined

Retrieve bilateral trade from UN Comtrade database

Arrange the data by year

Replace zero and empty trade volumes if other weight metrics(altQty or qty) exist

Replace zero and empty netweight values from similar trade

Balance bilateral trade reporting asymmetries (unit price-weighted approach)

Research country selection and trade share

Assign transport and build common transport modes 

Assign the most common transport to unspecified transport

Life cycle inventory of transport

Data preparation

Figure 2: Plots of trade flow

Scenario LCA 

Other figures


Examples in LCI_model.xlsx:




The life cycle inventory (LCI) for modeling life cycle assessment (LCA) in 'Shift to intra-EU-OECD trade increased environmental benefits of global plastic waste trade after Basel Convention Amendments'




This Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) includes 86 activities (75 for waste treatment and 11 for international transport), comprising:• Complete activities from the Ecoinvent 3.8 database• Assembled activities (see note below)• Parameterized activities (see note below)All activities are organized into nine sheets, with country-specific settings defined in the final sheet, 'Parameter-scenarios'. The parameter-scenarios LCA is conducted using Activity Browser, an open-source software for LCA built on Brightway 2, developed by Bernhard Steubing (Leiden University) and collaborators.









                                                       An example of an activity with corresponding explanations







activity name1
reference product1
location
flow type
amount
unit
formula5
note


PE incineration(L)7
PE incineration(L)
GLO
production
1
kilogram
 
 


treatment of waste polyethylene, municipal incineration3
waste polyethylene
RoW
technosphere2
1
kilogram
 
 


electricity, medium voltage, group for 27 countries
electricity, medium voltage
GLO
technosphere
EP * 46.2/LHV
kilowatt hour
EP * 46.2/LHV6
 


heat and power co-generation, natural gas, conventional power plant, 100MW electrical
heat, district or industrial, natural gas
Country-specific in Ecoinvent4
technosphere
HP* 46.2/LHV
megajoule
HP* 46.2/LHV
 









Note:

1.The activity and reference product are implicitly indicated in the first row with bold fonts, while other rows refer to intermediate activities and reference products.

2. 'Technospheres' indicates input (e.g., materials) and output flows (e.g., waste treatment) involved in this activity.

3. The intermediate activity can be a complete activity in the Ecoinvent 3.8 database if no additional explanation is provided. It can also be an assembled activity, such as LCI adapted from LCA Commons using the Ecoinvent database (see the sheet 'Virgin plastic production(12)' for details). Additionally, it can be a parameterized activity created by the authors. For example, "electricity, medium voltage, group for 27 countries" is a parameterized activity relying on the given parameter of the country name. See the sheets 'National electricity mix(1)' and 'Parameter-scenarios' for details.

4.'Country-specific in Ecoinvent' indicates that we chose the activity in Ecoinvent based on geographical division.

5. 'formula' indicates that the production amount of this activity depends on the given parameters.

6. The  'formula' in this case includes two parameters, which we defined in the sheet 'Parameter-scenarios' across countries.

7. To measure the uncertainty of a specific activity, activities are characterized by potential lower impact (L, suggesting lower estimates of electricity, material input, or waste disposal, or higher estimates of recovered energy) or higher impact (U, suggesting higher estimates of electricity, material input, or waste disposal, or lower estimates of recovered energy). 'wo' indicates incineration without energy recovery. 












The LCI data are organized into ten sheets: ‘National electricity mix(1)’, ‘Recycling(12)’, ‘Recycling residue treatment(10)’, ‘Virgin plastic production(12)’, ‘Incineration(20)’, ‘Sanitary landfill(5)’, ‘Unsanitary landfill(5)’, ‘Open dumping(5)’, ‘Open burning(5)’, and ‘International transport(11)’. Additionally, there are two sheets for 'Parameter-scenarios' and 'Notes'. 

Additional files with the extensions '.pkl' and '.xlsx' are necessary to run the Python scripts provided above.