Environmental and Economic Assessment of the PET Bottles Manufacturing Process: A Case Study

By using an integrated methodology, the purpose of this paper is to present the environmental and economic evaluation of the extended production process of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles for soft drinks in the context of the Greek economy. Such an evaluation can lead to improvements, which are highly desirable since the large quantities of plastic bottles produced every year worldwide, contributing to a significant environmental footprint. We use the Environmental Performance of Industrial Processes (EPIP) method that enables the identification of the production process stages, which have critical environmental impact and the highest contribution to the overall environmental costs, thus facilitating the application of targeted interventions. After identifying the production stages with severe environmental impacts in a real industrial environment, using the same method, we assess the impact of targeted interventions.