Economic optimization of the Northern Italian supply chain for residual plastic packaging waste treatment

Plastics are present in many products and nearly every commercial sector. However, the management of plastic waste is still an open challenge. This work proposes a mixed integer linear programming optimization model of the Northern Italian supply chain for mixed plastic waste treatment. The model aims at maximizing the economic performance of the overall supply chain, taking into account both the selection of the treatment technologies (i.e. incineration, gasification and pyrolysis) and finding the optimal distribution of the material flows. The best economic scenario is achieved by a supply chain where only incineration plants are selected, yielding a gross profit of 31.8 M€/y for the overall supply chain. However, by varying oil price and specific treatment costs both pyrolysis and incineration plants are selected, showing that pyrolysis could be an economically competitive technology for chemical recycle of the mixed plastic waste, leading to a gross profit of 21.6 M€/y (- 32 % w.r.t. base case scenario).