Browsing by Author "Russo, Valentina"

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    Addressing plastic pollution and waste flows: Insights from South Africa’s experience
    (2024-06) Oelofse, Suzanna HH; Russo, Valentina; Stafford, William HL
    The Pew Charitable Trust's 2020 report 'Breaking the Plastic Wave', indicates that existing technologies could support an 80% reduction in plastic leakage relative to business as usual by 2040. Therefore, South Africa became the first country to work with the Pew Charitable Trust and Oxford University to test and apply 'Pathways', a modelling framework and software tool which stemmed and evolved from the Pew report, at country level. The tool calculates the flows of plastics in the economy and the impact of various strategies to reduce future plastic pollution. The Scenario Builder within the Pathways tool allows the user to optimise flows in the plastics value chain to satisfy a set of defined objectives in order to achieve an optimal solution. Three major findings have emerged from the application of Pathways at country level for South Africa. Firstly, plastic pollution is set to almost double by 2040 if no interventions are implemented. Secondly, meeting the newly legislated extended producer responsibility (EPR) targets set for plastic packaging can avoid 33% of projected total pollution over the period of 2023-2040. Lastly, an optimal system change can avoid 63% of total plastic pollution over the period 2023-2040. Thus, applying Pathways at country level in South Africa has proven to be valuable by setting a baseline against which progress towards reducing plastic pollution can be measured; determining the outcome of meeting the legislated EPR targets over time, and informing policy decisions by allowing users to model different scenarios towards an optimal system change scenario.
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    A comparative cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of single-use plastic shopping bags and various alternatives available in South Africa
    (2022-09) Stafford, William HL; Russo, Valentina; Nahman, Anton
    The pervasive use of plastics, coupled with inadequate waste management systems in many countries, has led to widespread leakage of plastics into the environment. In South Africa, the predominant type of shopping bags are single-use plastic bags; but paper, biodegradable plastic and re-usable bags have emerged as alternatives. To compare these alternatives in terms of environmental impacts across the whole product life cycle, we carried out a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of 16 shopping bag types available in South Africa. The comparison includes single-use plastic, bioplastic and paper bags, as well as re-usable bags (typically made from plastic in South Africa). The functional unit was based on the estimated annual volume of groceries purchased per capita. An attributional LCA was carried out using the ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint(H) method, with 18 mid-point impact categories. In addition, given the lack of an impact category for plastic pollution in existing methods, we developed a mid-point indicator based on the persistence of plastics (and other materials) leaked to the environment (Persistence of leaked material, PersistenceLM). Specific attention was placed on modelling end-of-life and waste management in the South African context. Economic-based allocation at the point of substitution was used to apportion environmental impacts to virgin and recyclate material, and the production of recyclate was modelled using system expansion.
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    Exploring sustainability potentials in vineyards through LCA? Evidence from farming practices in South Africa
    (2021-04) Russo, Valentina; Strever, AE; Ponstein, HJ
    Following the urgency to curb environmental impacts across all sectors globally, this is the frst life cycle assessment of diferent wine grape farming practices suitable for commercial conventional production in South Africa, aiming at better understanding the potentials to reduce adverse efects on the environment and on human health. Methods An attributional life cycle assessment was conducted on eight diferent scenarios that reduce the inputs of herbicides and insecticides compared against a business as usual (BAU) scenario. We assess several impact categories based on ReCiPe, namely global warming potential, terrestrial acidifcation, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial toxicity, freshwater toxicity, marine toxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, human health and ecosystems. A water footprint assessment based on the AWARE method accounts for potential impacts within the watershed. Results and discussion Results show that in our impact assessment, more sustainable farming practices do not always outperform the BAU scenario, which relies on synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals. As a main trend, most of the impact categories were dominated by energy requirements of wine grape production in an irrigated vineyard, namely the usage of electricity for irrigation pumps and diesel for agricultural machinery. The most favourable scenario across the impact categories provided a low diesel usage, strongly reduced herbicides and the absence of insecticides as it applied cover crops and an integrated pest management. Pesticides and heavy metals contained in agrochemicals are the main contributors to emissions to soil that afected the toxicity categories and impose a risk on human health, which is particularly relevant for the manual labour-intensive South African wine sector. However, we suggest that impacts of agrochemicals on human health and the environment are undervalued in the assessment. The 70% reduction of toxic agrochemicals such as Glyphosate and Paraquat and the 100% reduction of Chlorpyriphos in vineyards hardly afected the model results for human and ecotoxicity. Our concerns are magnifed by the fact that manual labour plays a substantial role in South African vineyards, increasing the exposure of humans to these toxic chemicals at their workplace. Conclusions A more sustainable wine grape production is possible when shifting to integrated grape production practices that reduce the inputs of agrochemicals. Further, improved water and related electricity management through drip irrigation, defcit irrigation and photovoltaic-powered irrigation is recommendable, relieving stress on local water bodies, enhancing drought-preparedness planning and curbing CO2 emissions embodied in products.
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    Informing policy on grocery carrier bags: Evidence from a life cycle sustainability assessment
    (2021-02) Nahman, Anton; Russo, Valentina; Stafford, William HL
    The environmental impacts of plastic waste have received significant attention from both policy makers and the general public. A number of countries have banned certain single-use plastic products, including plastic carrier bags. However, alternatives to plastic carrier bags come with their own set of impacts. The economic, social and environmental impacts associated with plastic bags should be assessed alongside those of the various alternatives, across their respective life cycles. This paper presents results from a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment of 16 different grocery carrier bag options in South Africa. The aim was to compare the bags in terms of environmental and socio-economic performance, and to inform policymakers, retailers and the general public about which type of bag is “best” in the South African context. Environmental indicators were based primarily on the ReCiPe 2016 impact assessment methodology. However, current life cycle assessment methodologies exclude indicators relating to the impacts of plastic pollution. We therefore developed a new indicator, namely persistence of plastic material in the environment, as a proxy for impacts associated with plastic pollution. We also added two key socio-economic indicators; namely employment and affordability. Overall, reusable plastic bags (particularly the 70 µm HDPE bag) perform better than singleuse bags, assuming that they are reused at least 3 to 10 times. The best performing singleuse bag is the common 24 µm HDPE bag with 100% recycled content. Biodegradable bags perform poorly overall, except on the plastic pollution indicator. Single-use bags perform best in terms of employment, particularly paper bags.
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    A lifecycle-based evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions from the plastics industry in South Africa
    (2023-01) Goga, T; Harding, K; Russo, Valentina; Von Blottnitz, H
    Increased production rates of plastic and limited disposal methods have fed concerns regarding environmental degradation. Whilst most of the focus is on plastic litter and marine pollution, greenhouse gas emissions of plastic over its value chains are also of interest and non-trivial at the global scale. To quantify the global warming potential of the local plastics industry, a lifecycle-based carbon footprint is presented encompassing activities such as resource extraction, polymer production and conversion, recycling, and disposal stages. The South African plastics sector is estimated to have emitted 15.8 Mt CO2eq in 2015, with the granulate production stage bearing the highest environmental load. The consumption of fossil fuel based electricity and the burning of plastic waste also contribute notably to the overall emissions. Additionally, the recycling process in 2015 saved approximately 1.4 Mt of greenhouse gas emissions.
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    Transitioning from conventional plastic to more sustainable alternative materials: Evidence from South Africa
    (2022-10) Oelofse, Suzanna HH; Nahman, Anton; Russo, Valentina; Stafford, William HL; Muswema, Aubrey P; Mathew, Maya J; Muniyasamy, Sudhakar
    The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in partnership with UNIDO and the University of the Witwatersrand, with funding from the Japanese government, undertook research to identify and implement opportunities for sustainable alternative materials, including biodegradable plastic in South Africa. The project aims are twofold: 1) to develop an action plan to support sustainable transition to alternative materials and 2) to strengthen plastic recycling through encouraging waste separation at source and integration of informal waste collectors in a circular economy. This paper reports on the findings from research activities to determine the most appropriate alternative materials for consideration when transitioning to more sustainable alternatives. The results include that of the LCA study, availability of end-of-life treatment options for alternative materials, demonstration of the identified technologies/materials, the potential to produce alternative materials locally, and the Action Plan for South Africa to make the transition.
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    What material flow analysis and life cycle assessment reveal about plastic polymer production and recycling in South Africa
    (2022-08) Goga, T; Harding, Kevin; Russo, Valentina; Von Blottnitz, H
    Global production and consumption of plastics have increased significantly in recent years. The environmental impacts associated with this trend have received growing attention internationally with single-use plastic packaging responsible for most plastic pollution. Locally, the SA Plastics Pact, the Industry Master Plan, and the National Waste Management Strategy all aim to transform the current linear sector model into a circular system by setting targets for increased collection and recycling rates and recycled content. However, the associated impacts of implementing such circular interventions have not yet been assessed across the plastics life cycle. Industrial ecology tools, material flow analysis and life cycle assessment, are used to generate mass-based indicators as well as indicators of climate damage in the form of the global warming potential. The carbon footprint of the South African plastics value chain from cradle to grave was estimated at 17.9 Mt CO2eq emissions in 2018, with 52% of these due to the local coal-based monomer production process. The end-of-life stage lacks proper waste collection for a third of the population, but contributes only 2% to the total greenhouse gas emissions, with recycling having a minimal environmental impact. Future projections of plastics production, use, disposal, and recycling for 2025 show that increasing mechanical recycling rates to achieve stated targets would start to have a significant effect on virgin polymer demand (in the order of several billion rands of sales annually) but would also reduce waste disposal by 28% relative to baseline growth and 18% below values calculated for 2018.