PhD defence Felicitas Barbara Maria Pellengahr

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment, Plastics, Microplastics, End-of-life

"With the End in Mind: Advancing Comprehensive Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of Plastics"

Felicitas Pellengahr examined the lifecycle of renewable plastics, from production to recycling. While traditional plastics remain indispensable in modern society, they pose significant environmental challenges, including reliance on fossil fuels and the proliferation of microplastics. Innovative materials, such as biobased, recycled, and biodegradable plastics, offer potential solutions.

For a successful transition to a circular economy, a reliable assessment of these new materials is crucial. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a common method for such evaluations, but current models often oversimplify waste processing and entirely overlook microplastics.

Pellengahr succeeded in enhancing LCA models by:

• Improving end-of-life process representation: developing transparent and realistic models of waste treatment.

• Incorporating microplastics: creating datasets to account for marine microplastic emissions in assessments.

Through industry collaborations, she tested these models on real products, including compostable teabags and sportswear. The results demonstrate that the refined models yield more dependable analyses, making LCAs more valuable for scientists, businesses, and policymakers working towards sustainable plastic solutions.

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