Development of an Evaluation Tool for Engineering Sustainable Recycling Pathways

Abstract

As the product end of life is becoming more and more complex, the recycling systems encountered many difficulties in valuing all the materialscontained in the products. This involves not only recovering many materials but also getting the most economical way and the minimalenvironmental impact. The recycling industry is a new business sector that needs to be accompanied in its development and research of the mostsustainable pathway to guarantee the resources circularity. That is why recyclers need robust assessment tools to make the right choices duringthe engineering of recycling pathways. This assessment, during the designing phase of the waste management line, should enable recyclers tochoose the right recycling processes for a wide range of end of life products. In this article, we present how we develop a methodology forevaluating the performance of recycling processes and give relevant indicators during their design phase.