Normative and empirical solutions to the upcycling dilemma

Abstract

With the pressure to transform our society into a circular economy, companies increasingly need to upcycle residual materials into new products by entering symbiotic partnerships. However, a dilemma arises when different companies in the same industrial symbiosis network desire to claim for themselves the benefits of such symbiosis and of the upcycling of materials. This study investigates how this upcycling dilemma can be solved, and which solution is obtained following different guidelines for Life Cycle Assessment, namely the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the ISO standards, and the Product Environmental Footprint. Firstly, a qualitative assessment of the three guidelines is performed to evaluate their normative and empirical elements and their potential to drive change. Secondly, a quantitative assessment is performed by modelling three real-world cases according to each guideline. In each case a residual material from a “supplier” company is upcycled into a new product by a “user” company. Results show that the choice of guideline has a large impact on the results and the incentive created to enter the industrial symbiosis network. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Product Environmental Footprint have several normative elements. Although simple to apply in theory, they leave space for interpretation and ambiguity and tend favour the user company. The ISO standards have empirical elements leading to case-dependent results and requiring a thorough understanding of the system under study to be effectively applied. All guidelines show an improvement when the assessment is performed at system level instead of focusing on one or the other company in isolation, even though such improvement is small in magnitude. The conclusion is that the idea of “sharing” environmental savings is unsound, as upcycling is only obtained in a joint effort, and the recommendation is to evaluate upcycling systemically.