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The increasing attention to reduce plastic waste drives the design of products containing less plastics. Deli packaging is such a product, ranging from solely plastic packaging, to relatively new paperboard-plastic composites. In this research, the main objective is to quantify the recyclability of different deli packaging types and evaluate the effectiveness of recycling instructions. Therefore, we combine statistical entropy calculations (for the compositional complexity) with energy calculations from generic sorting and separation processes (i.e., the energy required to separate the products into their chemical substances). Deli packaging samples have been collected, categorized, weighed and dismantled. The results indicate that the use of paperboard may be slightly better than using solely plastics when evaluating on a product-level basis. However, since the product types are likely to disturb each other’s waste streams, the analysis should be extended to the whole waste stream in order to fully gauge their impact. Recycling instructions for consumers were found to, in some cases, increase the complexity of monostreams (i.e., plastic and paperboard fractions after dismantling). Although this is evident, for the first time, we develop and apply simple quantitative metrics to describe innate recyclability. The methodology allows to support design-for-recycling decisions for more complicated systems.

Horse manure, the improper disposal of which, imposes considerable environmental costs, constitutes an apt feedstock for conversion to renewable fuels and chemicals when tail gas reactive pyrolysis (TGRP) is employed. TGRP is a modification of fast pyrolysis that recycles its noncondensable gases and produces a bio-oil low in oxygen concentration and rich in naphthalene. Herein, we evaluate the coproduction of phenol as a value-added renewable chemical, alongside jet-range fuels within distributed TGRP systems using techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. We investigate the metrics global warming potential (GWP), cumulative exergy demand (CExD), and cost for the conversion of 200 dry metric tons per day of horse manure to bio-oil and its subsequent upgrade to hydrocarbon fuel and phenolic chemicals. Assigning credits for the offset of the coproducts, the net GWP and CExD of TGRP jet fuel are 10 g of CO2 eq and 0.4 MJ per passenger kilometer distance traveled, respectively. These values are considerably lower than the GWP and CExD of petroleum-based aviation fuel. The minimum fuel selling price of the TGRP jet fuel ($1.35$1.80 L1) is estimated to be much greater than that of petroleum-based aviation fuel ($0.42 L1), except under optimized fuel conversion and coproduct market conditions ($0.53$0.79 L1) when including a market price for carbon.