Apportionment of Recycle to Industrial Reuser and Consumer

Reusable products (e.g., packaging) feature a finite lifetime: After a number of trips, if not discarded by the consumer, they are sent for material recycling by the industrial reuser. A method for analytical determination of recycling of no longer reusable products by the industrial reuser is proposed. Industrial reuser recycling is shown to depend nonlinearly on the lifetime and on the reuse retention factor, which is dimensionless and ranges from zero to one. As the retention factor increases, the industrial reuser becomes the main recycler, while recycling from consumer waste recovery disappears and vice versa as the ratio tends to zero. This implies that for highly reusable packaging, post-consumer collection and recycling systems may be unnecessary, and recycling should be credited to the refilling/packaging industry. The total number of reuse trips and the annual reuse frequency have no impact on the industrial reuser recycling level. The results may serve for environmental monitoring of packaging products for apportionment of recycling credit and of reuse/recycling incentives to industry and to post-consumer recycling systems and for planning and sizing of packaging waste recovery facilities (collection, transportation, separation).