1335478 (Geyer). The most significant environmental benefit of recycling and reuse is typically their potential to avoid or displace the production of equivalent materials and products from primary resources. This also means that lack of displacement would significantly reduce these environmental benefits. Unfortunately, the treatment of displacement in industrial ecology and life cycle assessment (LCA) is currently based on assumptions instead of scientific theory and evidence. The goal of this project is to advance dramatically the understanding of the causes, mechanisms and dynamics that govern displacement of primary production due to material recycling and product reuse. The project will achieve this by integrating pertinent economic concepts and methods into the analytical frameworks of industrial ecology and LCA. The resulting consequential analysis framework will use market models to determine the interaction between primary and secondary products and materials and thus estimate displacement. These models will account for supply and demand dynamics, competition between imperfect substitutes, and market growth and segmentation. The framework will be tested in several case studies. The case studies will include econometric analyses in order to determine pertinent economic parameters for key products and materials, and thus estimate actual displacement rates. The results from the research will be used to develop recommendations for the treatment of displaced production due to reuse and recycling in LCA, product-based greenhouse gas accounting, and product category rules for type III eco-labels. It will also be used to identify public and corporate reuse and recycling policies and incentives that foster and maximize displacement. Improved understanding of displaced production due to reuse and recycling has the potential to lead to significant improvements in public and corporate reuse and recycling policies. It will also enable science-based treatments of reuse and recycling in LCA methodology, greenhouse gas accounting standards, and environmental product declarations. The research will have direct impact on higher education through a multi-disciplinary graduate seminar and research opportunities for one PhD and two undergraduate students. The project will also provide pre-college research opportunities for high school students through the UCSB Research Mentor Program, which provides research opportunities for students from underfunded high schools. Public interest in the research findings will be served through outreach activities, including the design and presentation of webinars and a dedicated project website that will contain all public data, models, and materials, and will continue to be maintained beyond the duration of the research project.
