Resource efficiency of wood-plastic composites

Identifying secondary material substitution potentials and

an environmentally sound end-of-life treatment

DISSERTATION

with the aim of achieving a doctoral degree

at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences
Department of Biology
of Universität Hamburg

Submitted by

Dipl.-Ing. Philipp F. Sommerhuber

2016, Hamburg
§7 (4) der Promotionsordnung der MIN-Fakultät

Hiermit erkläre ich an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Dissertationsschrift selbst verfasst
und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt habe.

I hereby declare, on oath, that I have written this dissertation on my own and have not used
other than the acknowledged resources and aids.

Hamburg, 8 Aug. 2016 __________________________

Philipp F. Sommerhuber

English Review Testimonial

I certify that the English of the dissertation

Resource efficiency of wood-plastic composites: Identifying secondary material substitution

potentials and an environmentally sound end-of-life treatment

written by Philipp F. Sommerhuber was reviewed and is correct. The dissertation was reviewed
by Susan J. Ortloff (US citizen), freelance translator and editor

Dundee, USA, 1 Aug. 2016 __________________________

Susan J. Ortloff

Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Andreas Krause

2. Prof. Dr. Udo Mantau

Ort und Datum der Disputation: Hamburg, 08 Nov. 2016

II
Danksagung

Die ersten Zeilen möchte ich meiner Familie widmen. Allen voran meiner Frau Julia, die mich
den Weg von Wien nach Hamburg bestreiten ließ und wenig später auch selbst in Hamburg Fuß
fasste und uns eine Tochter schenkte. Ihr wart und seid meine treibende Kraft. Ohne Euch hätte
ich es nicht geschafft. Ich liebe Euch.

Alles hätte nicht geschehen können, ohne den guten und bekräftigenden Zuspruch meiner Eltern
Eva und Heimold. Ohne euch wäre ich nicht da, wo ich jetzt bin. Ich danke Euch von Herzen.

Auf fachlicher als auch persönlicher Ebene möchte ich meinem Doktorvater Prof. Dr.
Andreas Krause sowie meinen Mentoren Dr. Johannes Welling und Sebastian Rüter danken.
Ohne die offenen Gespräch und vor allem den nötigen Freiraum, das Thema von verschiedenen
Seiten her zu beleuchten und zu diskutieren, als auch die Möglichkeit mich umfassend
weiterbilden zu können, wäre mein Vorhaben nicht möglich gewesen.

Die Veröffentlichungen der kumulativen Dissertation sind im Marie Curie ITN Projekt CASTLE –
Careers in Sustainability Excellence, grant agreement no. 316020 – gefördert durch das FP7
Rahmenprogramm der Europäische Union, entstanden. Dafür möchte ich den Projektleitern und
Projektkoordinatoren des European Forest Institute Dr. Marcus Lindner, Tommi Suominen,
Niina Valbuena und Senni Piirainen danken. Mein Dank gilt ebenso meinen internationalen PhD
KollegInnen, die mir in den letzten drei Jahren zur Seite standen und meine Arbeit in zahlreichen
Diskussionen bereicherten: Genevieve Mortimer, Dr. Salvatore Martire, Frank Müller, Teresa
Fuente, Anna Harnmeijer, Anna Liza Bais, Francesca Santaniello, Gediminas Jasinevičius, Heather
Davidson, Oludunsin Arodudu, Qianyu Li und Alexandra Langer.

Ebenso möchte ich meinen KollegInnen des Thünen-Institut am Standort Hamburg sowie des
Zentrum Holzwirtschaft der Universität Hamburg für deren freundschaftlichen Arbeitsalltag
und fachlichen Expertise danken: Dr. Hermann Achenbach, Dr. Jan Wenker, Dr. Jan
Lüdtke, Dr. Stefan Diederichs, Dr. Ali Akrami, Jan Benthien, Oliver Mertens, Julius Gurr,
Goran Schmidt, Sylvia Diestel, Martin Nopens, Sabrina Heldner, Stefanie Warsow,
Johannes Beruda und viele weitere.

III
ESSENTIAL PUBLICATIONS FOR THE CUMULATIVE THESIS
Peer-reviewed papers
Sommerhuber, P.F., Wenker, J.L., Rüter, S., and Krause, A. 2016. Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic
composites: Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option.
Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 1–14. DOI:10.1016/[Link].2016.10.012.

Sommerhuber, P.F., Wang, T., and Krause, A. 2016. Wood-plastic composites as potential applications of
recycled plastics of electronic waste and recycled particleboard. Journal of Cleaner Production,
121:176–185. DOI:10.1016/[Link].2016.02.036.

Sommerhuber, P.F., Welling, J., and Krause, A. 2015. Substitution potentials of recycled HDPE and wood
particles from post-consumer packaging waste in wood-plastic composites. Waste Management,
46:76–85. DOI:10.1016/[Link].2015.09.011.

ADDITIONAL PUBLICATIONS AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES

Peer-reviewed papers
Benthien, J.T., Sommerhuber, P.F., Heldner, S., Ohlmeyer, M., Seppke, B., and Krause, A. 2016. Influence of
material on the size distribution of wood particles for wood-plastic composite (WPC) manufacture.
European Journal of Wood and Wood Products, 1–6. DOI:10.1007/s00107-016-1122-2.

Proceedings and oral conference presentations

Krause, A., and Sommerhuber, P.F. 2016. Extending the life cycle: Novel wood-plastic composites as
potential applications for post-consumer wood and plastics. 2nd World Congress and Expo on
Recycling, July 25–27, Berlin, Germany.

Sommerhuber, P.F. 2015. Environmental product design of wood-plastic composites. In Proceedings of the
58th International Convention of Society of Wood Science and Technology, June 7–12, 2015, Grand Teton
National Park, Jackson, Wyoming, USA: Renewable Materials and the Bio-Economy, edited by Barnes
H.M. and Herian V.L. pp. 42–49.

Sommerhuber, P.F. 2015. Cascading use potentials of post-consumer resources for wood-plastic
composites. Sixth WPC & NFC Conference, Dec 16–17 Cologne, Germany.

Sommerhuber, P.F. 2014. Environmental product design of wood-plastic composites. Sustainability and
Resource Efficiency (SusRE), International PhD Workshop, Nov 27 – Dec 2. Göttingen, Germany.

Sommerhuber, P.F. 2014. Wood-plastic composites: Produktgestaltung von WPC unter ökologischen
Gesichtspunkten. Forschungskreis HWK, April 30. Braunschweig, Germany.

Poster presentations
Sommerhuber, P.F., Rüter, S., Welling, J., and Krause, A. 2015. Life cycle assessment of cascading post-
consumer wood for wood-plastic composites. Towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy, Oct 21–23.
Barcelona, Spain.

Sommerhuber, P.F. 2014. Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites (WPC). CASTLE Workshop,
Sep 29 – Oct 3. Vienna, Austria.

SUPERVISION OF STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITÄT HAMBURG

Wang, T. 2016. Wood plastic composite made of recycled polypropylene, polystyrene, acrylonitrile
butadiene styrene and recycled particleboard. Universität Hamburg, Zentrum Holzwirtschaft, Master
thesis.

IV
Abstract
In the drive towards a sustainable bioeconomy, there is growing interest in the development of
composite materials made of plastics compounded with wood particles, known as wood-plastic
composites (WPC). The main use for WPC is as outdoor decking material. The market share of
WPC decking compared to solid wood decking is small, but due to their promoted customer-
friendliness in the use stage, WPC decking are likely to increase their share on the outdoor
decking market. New products may soon be introduced to new markets as injection moulding
and 3D printing of semi-finished WPC compounds or filaments are currently in an early stage.

Recycling of post-consumer materials is promoted by political strategies and concepts, such as

the European Bioeconomy Strategy and the Circular Economy to ensure a sustainable resource
supply in the context of resource efficiency. The goal of the thesis was to identify resource
efficiency potentials of WPC, in terms of the projected increase in WPC consumption and the
resulting rise in post-consumer WPC in our society. The focus was on characterizing WPC
produced from secondary materials from specific waste streams as well as assessing the
environmental parameters of the product and end-of-life (EoL) stages of WPC. An extensive
selection of methods was chosen comprising material flow and economic analysis, physical
characterization of laboratory scaled WPC specimens, and life cycle assessment (LCA).
Application considerations in context of normative standards and policy frameworks completed
the holistic approach to be able to identify secondary material substitution potentials and an
environmentally sound EoL treatment.

Post-consumer mixed waste wood and recycled particleboard (both A II) could substitute virgin
wood particles or wood co-products, but insufficient sorting of abrasive materials prevents their
utilization in WPC. From an ecological point of view, wood co-products should be considered
instead of recycled wood but, these materials in particular are facing a competing demand in
context of energy purposes. From a physical perspective, however, using recycled wood in WPC
achieved comparable results to WPC produced from virgin Norway spruce particles.

Post-consumer thermoplastic polyolefins from packaging waste as well as polystyrene and

acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene from electronic waste were identified as substitutes for the
virgin thermoplastics currently used in WPC. These secondary materials are readily available, as
recyclers looking for new markets of their secondary materials, achieve comparable physical
results and would benefit the environmental profile of WPC. Recycling to yield secondary WPC
was identified as the environmentally best alternative compared to incineration with energy
recovery by means of a system LCA.

V
Kurzfassung
Im Zuge der Umsetzung der Bioökonomie Strategie der Europäischen Union wird eine steigende
Nachfrage auf die Ressource Holz prognostiziert. Auch der Konsum von Produkten auf Basis
fossiler Rohstoffe steigt weiter an. Holz-Kunststoffverbundwerkstoffe – wood plastic composites
(WPC) – erfreuen sich aufgrund proklamierter Wartungsfreiheit in der Nutzungsphase
steigender Beliebtheit im Terrassendielenmarkt. Aufgrund einer anhaltend steigenden
Nachfrage nach WPC-Dielen und einem noch nicht ausgeschöpften technischen Potential an
WPC-Produkten aus dem Spritzguss- oder 3D-Druckverfahren, kann in Zukunft mit einem
vermehrten Aufkommen an WPC gerechnet werden. Dies wird sich sowohl auf die
Rohstoffbereitstellung als auch auf das Abfallaufkommen auswirken und ökologische
Herausforderungen mit sich bringen.

Die Wertschöpfung von sekundären Rohstoffen als auch die Kreislaufwirtschaft sind wesentliche
Aspekte der Bioökonomie um eine ressourceneffiziente, nachhaltige Wirtschaft zu realisieren
und die Abhängigkeit von Rohstoffimporten zu reduzieren. In dieser Dissertation wurde daher
untersucht, welche potentiellen sekundären Rohstoffen in spezifischen Abfallströmen stecken
(Verpackung, Elektroaltgeräte), die sich als Substitute in WPC eignen könnten. Dazu wurden
verschiedene Methoden herangezogen, um zunächst die mengenrelevanten Abfallfraktionen und
Sekundärrohstoffen mit Hilfe einer Stoffstromanalyse zu identifizieren, die weiter zu WPC
verarbeitet werden könnten. Ein Augenmerk wurde dabei auf ökonomische
Wechselbeziehungen gelegt. Im Technikum wurden anschließend WPC-Prüfkörper hergestellt,
die physikalisch charakterisiert wurden. Ökologische Fragestellungen wurden anhand von
Produkt- und Systemökobilanzen beleuchtet. Umsetzungsbezogene Fragestellungen hinsichtlich
rechtlicher Rahmenbedingungen und Produktnormen wurden hinzugezogen.

Gemischtes Gebrauchtholz der Altholzkategorie A II sowie gebrauchte Spanplatten (A II) eignen

sich als Substitute für die derzeit verwendeten frischen Sägenebenprodukte oder aufbereiteten
Industriehölzer von Nadelhölzern. Die Ergebnisse der Produktökobilanz und der
Elementaranalyse zeigten, dass jedoch Sägenebenprodukte verwendet werden sollten. Diese
stehen allerdings im immer größer werdenden Wettbewerb zur energetischen Nutzung. Wie
Ergebnisse der physikalischen Materialcharakterisierung zeigten, ist die Altholzverwertung für
WPC möglich. Sekundäre thermoplastische Polyolefine von recycelten Verpackungsabfällen
sowie Acrylnitril-Butadien-Styrol und Polystyrol von recycelten Elektro- und Elektronikabfällen
eignen sich als Substitute. Diese sind in ausreichend qualitativer, guter Verfügbarkeit erhältlich
und ökologisch vorteilhaft. Die Systemökobilanz zeigte, dass stoffliches Recycling von WPC die
ökologisch sinnvollere Alternative gegenüber der Verbrennung mit Energierückführung ist.

VI
Content

1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 The bioeconomy ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
1.2 Circular economy ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.3 Resource efficiency ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
1.4 Life cycle assessment ................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
2 Wood-plastic composites: status quo .................................................................................................................................................. 8
2.1 Raw material supply for existing WPC products ............................................................................................................................ 9
2.1.1 Wooden lignocellulosic particles..................................................................................................................................................... 9
2.1.2 Thermoplastic polymers .................................................................................................................................................................. 10
2.1.3 Utilization of secondary materials for WPC ............................................................................................................................ 11
2.2 End-of-life of WPC ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 12
2.3 Environmental assessments of WPC ................................................................................................................................................. 13
2.3.1 Products under study......................................................................................................................................................................... 16
2.3.2 Applied LCA methodologies............................................................................................................................................................ 18
3 Aim and scope of the thesis ................................................................................................................................................................... 21
4 Material and methods ............................................................................................................................................................................... 26
4.1 Material flow analysis ............................................................................................................................................................................... 26
4.2 Experimental design.................................................................................................................................................................................. 26
4.2.1 Materials................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26
4.2.2 Composite preparation ..................................................................................................................................................................... 28
4.2.3 Composite characterization ............................................................................................................................................................ 29
4.3 Life cycle assessment ................................................................................................................................................................................ 31
4.3.1 Product LCA ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 31
[Link] Laboratory-scaled WPC compound ................................................................................................................................ 32
[Link] Case study ECOLIFE® ............................................................................................................................................................. 33
4.3.2 System LCA.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 34
4.3.3 How to account for material inherent properties ................................................................................................................ 36
4.3.4 LCA software, databases and impact assessment method............................................................................................... 36
5 Publications and additional results.................................................................................................................................................... 37
5.1 Peer-reviewed paper I .............................................................................................................................................................................. 37
5.2 Peer-reviewed paper II ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48
5.3 Peer-reviewed paper III........................................................................................................................................................................... 59
5.4 Case study: LCA of ECOLIFE® window ............................................................................................................................................. 74
6 Discussion and synthesis ........................................................................................................................................................................ 76
6.1 Identification of potential secondary materials for WPC ........................................................................................................ 76
6.1.1 Secondary wood particles................................................................................................................................................................ 76
6.1.2 Secondary thermoplastic polymers ............................................................................................................................................ 79
6.2 Qualitative aspects of using secondary materials in WPC ...................................................................................................... 80
6.2.1 Physical properties ............................................................................................................................................................................. 80
6.2.2 Mechanical properties ....................................................................................................................................................................... 81
6.2.3 Challenges of using secondary materials for WPC manufacturing .............................................................................. 82
[Link] Waste wood sorting................................................................................................................................................................ 82
[Link] Immiscibility of secondary plastic materials ............................................................................................................. 83
[Link] Hazardous inorganic content............................................................................................................................................. 84
6.3 Ecological aspects of WPC ...................................................................................................................................................................... 85
6.3.1 Product stage ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 85
6.3.2 Identification of an environmentally sound end-of-life treatment .............................................................................. 87
7 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 89
8 References ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 91

VII
List of abbreviations

ABS Acroloynitrile-butadien-styrene
ALCA Attributional life cycle assessment
As Arsenic
AP Acidification potential
ADPE Abiotic depletion potential for non-fossil resources
ADPF Abiotic depletion potential for fossil resources
bbl Barrel (159 litres)
Co Cobalt
Cd Cadmium
Cr Chromium
Cu Copper
CCA Chromated-copper-arsenate
CLCA Consequential life cycle assessment
CML Institute of Environmental Sciences
CML-IA Database containing characterisation factors for LCIA
energyel Electricity
energyth Thermal energy
EEG German Renewable Energy Act
EoL End-of-life
EU European Union
EP Eutrophication potential
EPD Environmental product declaration
EPS Expanded polystyrene
FU Functional unit
GER Germany
GHG Greenhouse gas
GWP Global warming potential
HDPE High density polyethylene
KrWG German Waste Management and Product Recycling Act
LCA Life cycle assessment
LCI Life cycle inventory
LCIA Life cycle impact assessment
mc Moisture content
MAPE Maleic anhydride polyethylene
MAPP Propylene-maleic anhydride graft copolymer
MFI Melt flow index
MDF Medium-density fibreboard
MoE Modulus of elasticity
NCV Net calorific value
Ni Nickel
ODP Ozone depletion potential
Pb Lead
PE Polyethylene
PHA Polyhydroxyalkanoate
PLA Polylactide
POCP Formation potential of tropospheric ozone photochemical oxidants

VIII
PP Polypropylene
PS Polystyrene
PVC Polyvinyl chloride
UF Urea formaldehyde
USD US-dollar
RoHS Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive
SEM Scanning electron microscopy
SMA Styrene maleic anhydride copolymer
TPS Thermoplastic starch
TRACI Tool for reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts
UV Ultraviolet
WEEE Waste electrical and electronic equipment
WPC Wood-plastic composite

IX
1 Introduction

The introduction of fossil hydrocarbon resources into modern society was an irreversible turn in
technological development. It enabled economic growth, mass production of goods, and
individual mobility; but also lead to growing waste streams and severe environmental issues on
local, regional, and global scales (IPCC 2014). The global demand for engineering materials has
quadrupled in the past 50 years. Engineering materials originate from crude oil (i.e., plastics),
ores (i.e., metals, ceramics) and biomass (i.e., timber) (Allwood et al. 2011). This resulted in
shortage of economically feasible exploitable hydrocarbon fossil resources due to constant
increasing exploitation expenses. However, unforeseen technological leaps and political
circumstances are likely to change the market price of crude oil dramatically (Neumayer 2013).
Crude oil prices have been dropping since 2014 and continue to drop in 2016. On Jan 21, 2016,
the crude oil price was 28 USD/bbl. In June 2008, the peak of oil price was 137 USD/bbl
(Inflationdata 2016). It is questionable how the prices of crude oil will develop over long run.
Yet, it is given that

• industrialized and emerging economies depend almost completely on crude oil.

• The wealth of our societies depends on a non-renewable resource, which
o faces great uncertainty in terms of availability and price development due to
political and technical circumstances,
o causes hazardous impacts to the human health and the environment during its
life cycle,
o results in increasing synthetic, non-naturally degradable waste.

Up to now, about 50% percent of the total global crude oil consumption is utilized as an energy
carrier for transport purposes, 32% is used for heating, and 8% for electricity. The remaining
10% is used for products (5% chemicals, 5% polymers) (Franke et al. 2014). Therefore, a
tremendous amount of this valuable resource is lost in the transformation to energy.

Based upon the sustainable development goals (UNCED 1992), the European Commission
released a communication report in 2010 aiming at a sustainable and inclusive growth of the
European Union – EU (EC 2010). This communication report promoted the use of renewable
resources as bioenergy, which is highlighted as the climate change and energy target for the year
2020 and beyond. Further on, The European Bioeconomy Strategy (EC 2012b) highlights the use
of renewable resources instead of fossil resources in products as the cornerstone of sustainable
economic growth.

Introduction 1
1.1 The bioeconomy
The bioeconomy encompasses a strategic vision of the European economy to become
independent from hydrocarbon fossil resources and foster the economy with domestic
renewable resources. Foremost, this is based on the afore mentioned uncertainties in prices,
exacerbated by the EU’s massive and increasing reliance on imports to meet its resource needs
and its resulting political and industrial dependence on export countries (EEA 2015). This has
led to a renaissance in bio-resources for the production of energy (heat, electricity and fuel) in
the EU over the last decade.

Increased use of biofuels for land and air transportation will help reduce fossil carbon
consumption and mitigate its contribution to anthropogenic GHG emissions (IPCC 2014; Laqua
2015). The so-called “1st generation biofuels” from biomass are derived from starch or sugar
crops, such as corn, maize, or vegetable oil, which can be categorized as energy crops, resulting
in biodiesel, biogas, and bioethanol. Because biofuel production is highly subsidized and has
short rotation cycles (< 1 year), farmers increasingly began switching their agricultural land use
to biofuel production instead of food or fibre (Baumann 2015). The transformation of land-use
occurs on de-harvested areas, but also on forest areas. This has raised concerns about land use
competition, direct and indirect land use change effects, and loss in biodiversity (Alexandratos &
Bruinsma 2012; Lauri et al. 2014; Searchinger 2013; Searchinger et al. 2015).

Unused residues and co-products from agricultural land, forest activities and organic waste are
promising alternatives to the 1st generation biofuels in terms of cultivable land in the EU
Member States. They are classified as the “2nd generation biofuels” (Searle & Malins 2016).
Nonetheless, biofuels from woody biomass also raise environmental concerns (Valin et al. 2015).
The net carbon fluxes – carbon sequestration and carbon losses – may influence the total carbon
balance of a forest and its products (Klein et al. 2015). A non-sustainably managed forest or a
forest transformed to agricultural land with less carbon storage in the long term, will lead to
more GHG emissions, expressed as biogenic CO2 (Brandão & Milà i Canals 2013; Searchinger et
al. 2009).

Currently, market leaders in the European forest and wood-based industries are seeking new
business opportunities for products based on wood, such as wood-plastic composites (WPC),
lignin-based products, biochemicals and afore mentioned biofuels (Laqua 2015). This highlights
the multiple possibilities of using wood and opening new markets in the near future. The use of
wood in various constructive and non-constructive applications, i.e., as a renewable energy
carrier and as a renewable precursor for the chemical industry and biofuel industry led to a
rising demand for wood resources (Härtl & Knoke 2014). In the long term, this competition is

Introduction 2
likely to result in a potential shortage of wood resources from sustainably managed forests
(Lauri et al. 2014; Mantau et al. 2010; UNECE et al. 2011).

As a result, the EU is facing a competing demand for wood resources as it strives toward the
bioeconomy and to maintain sustainable economic growth. The aim of the bioeconomy is to
strengthen the production of renewable biological products and resources and the conversion of
these resources and waste streams into value-added products by:

• ensuring biodiversity and environmental protection,

• reconciling demands for sustainable agriculture and fisheries, food security, and the
sustainable use of renewable biological resources, for industrial purposes and
• striving to be an innovative, resource efficient and low-emission economy (Allen 2015).

1.2 Circular economy

Recycling is one of the cornerstones of the bioeconomy. The term “circular economy” has
become popular by a report published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and its founding
partners from the automotive, IT, energy, and consulting industries (Ellen MacArthur
Foundation 2013). The concept is based on different scholarly ideas, such as industrial ecology,
biomimicry and cradle-to-cradle (McDonough & Braungart 2002; Singh & Ordoñez 2015; Yuan
et al. 2006). The concept was firstly proposed and introduced by Chinese authorities in 2002 as
a new development strategy aiming to reduce the contradictions between rapid economic
growth and the shortage of raw materials and energy. The circular economy links the afore
mentioned scholar ideas with policy implementations and economical aspects with ecological
recycling activities embedded in a transnational strategy. For example, the European strategy of
circular economy refers to several previous European policy actions, such as the “Roadmap to a
Resource Efficient Europe” (EC 2011b) and “Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy
for Europe” (EC 2012b; EP 2015).

Besides circular economy, the term “cascading” has been on the rise, which is also manifested in
the circular economy and bioeconomy strategy, but more focused on bio-based materials.
Cascading of resources can be linked to substitution and using secondary resources in terms of
resource efficiency. Sirkin & Houten (1994), as one of the first authors to research cascading of
resources, discussed resource quality loss and quality gain through recycling efforts, which
consumes energy, labour, and additional resources. The authors stated, “resource cascading has
been utilized as a method for achieving resource conservation in contexts where resources have
been regarded as precious or vital.”

Introduction 3
In Europe, the concepts of circular economy and cascading of resources are implemented to
some extent in the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (EC 2008). Historically, the waste
hierarchy was formalized as an ordered system of preferred management options in 1989. In
2008, the European Parliament adopted the waste hierarchy in the Waste Framework Directive
2008/98/EC, which Member States must introduce into national laws (Williams 2015), such as
the German Waste Management and Product Recycling Act – KrWG (German Government 2012).
These policies priories a cascaded treatment of waste by the so-called “waste hierarchy”:
(1) prevention, (2) preparing for re-use, (3) recycling, (4) other recovery (i.e., incineration with
energy recovery) and (5) disposal (i.e., incineration without energy recovery, landfilling).

All mentioned concepts point at the “polluter pays principle”, adopted by OECD in 1972 (OECD
1992), that is manifested in the extend producer responsibility (EPR) (OECD 2001). The EPR
emerged in Germany and Sweden in the early 1990s. It was set up as a policy strategy to be able
to create incentives for eco-design of packages and products, internalizing the costs of waste
management from municipalities and taxpayers to firms and consumers (Lifset et al. 2013). The
OECD published a policy guidance for governments in 2001, how to implement EPR in national
policy making (OECD 2001) and is now integrated in the Waste Framework Directive
2008/98/EC Article 8 (EC 2008). The EPR is a an established policy instrument for resource
efficiency and addresses the resource supply chain as well as the downstream markets of a
company’s products (OECD 2016).

1.3 Resource efficiency

The “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe” (EC 2011b) stated the ambitious goal, that by
2050 the EU’s economy will be driven by sustainably managed resources. The way to achieve
this vision is called “resource efficiency”. A brief look at a global perspective, international
initiatives have been established to support polices with scientific assessments in context of a
sustainable resource use, such as the Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP 2016). US policies have focused on energy efficiency, with Japanese and German
policies and strategies focusing more on material cycles, such as the ProgRess I in Germany
(BMUB 2015b; Huysman et al. 2015). In 2016, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment,
Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety published ProgRess II, which now satisfies the
energy efficiency perspective as well (BMUB 2015a).

The EC will stimulate the secondary materials market and demand for recycled materials
through economic incentives. Further, The European Commission stated (EC 2015), “Optimising
the use of resources is essential to ensure that growth is green and inclusive. Starting next year
[2016 – author’s note], we will implement an Action Plan on the Circular Economy to create a
single market for the re-use of materials and resources, supporting the move away from a linear

Introduction 4
economy. This will require action in all parts of the economic cycle, from sourcing to production,
consumption, waste and recycling and innovation to harness economically and environmentally
efficient business opportunities.” Recycling is therefore a profound aspect of resource efficiency.
It reduces the demand for virgin resources and thereby mitigates related energy use and
environmental impacts (Klinglmair et al. 2014). Changing the material structure of a product by
substitution of secondary materials through recycling activities is thus a potential way towards
resource efficiency on a product level (Woidasky & Hirth 2012).

How can resource efficiency be measured or assessed? A multitude of resource efficiency

indicators are represented in the “Resource Efficiency Scoreboard” of the EU (eurostat 2016)
respectively in the scoreboard database on eurostat. For example, the indicator “resource
productivity” reflects the ratio of economic output (GDP) to domestic material consumption
(DMC) (Equation 1). Domestic material consumption estimates the amount of raw materials
(measured by mass) directly used by an economy, including both materials extracted from
domestic territory and net inflows of goods and resources from abroad (EEA 2015).

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)[€]

𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 =
Domestic material consumption (DMC)[kg]

Equation 1. Resource productivity according to Resource Efficiency Scoreboard used

on eurostat

Although the resource productivity has increased in the EU-28 by 29% from 1.34 €/kg in 2000
to 1.73 €/kg in 2012, the European consumption patterns remain resource intensive (EEA
2015). Therefore, it can be argued that resource productivity is more focused on macro-
economics than integrating ecological concerns on a product level. Huysman et al. (2015) stated,
that indicators measuring resource efficiency can be categorized in (i) resource use-oriented
indicators and (ii) environmental impact-oriented indicators which both can be assessed by the
life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology.

1.4 Life cycle assessment

The ISO TR 14062: Environmental management (ISO 2002) provides a general outline of
integrating environmental aspects into product design, where LCA should be used to gain
ecological information in the conceptual design stage of a product. Two major LCA approaches
need to be distinguished to assess the ecological impacts of products or services: “attributional”
and “consequential”. These two approaches differ significantly in their goal, scope, system
boundary and data acquisition (EC et al. 2010; Ekvall & Weidema 2004; Guinée et al. 2011;
Rajagopal 2016; Zamagni et al. 2012). If the scope is to describe the potential environmental
impacts of a product, the suitable approach would be probably the attributional LCA (ALCA), as
described by Heijungs (1997). If the aim is to assess the environmental dependencies of changes

Introduction 5
by using resource X or Y in a product, the suitable approach would be the consequential LCA
(CLCA) approach. CLCA aims at modelling the consequences of one additional unit of output
(marginal unit) rather than the average consequences of a product (Curran et al. 2002;
Finkbeiner et al. 2014). The result provides information about how an individual decision will
influence the environment and whether the purchase of a supposed environmentally friendly
product is likely to lead to a reduction in overall environmental impacts or not (Frischknecht
2006).

At first sight, a thoroughly conducted environmental analysis should follow the CLCA approach
to be able to deal with questions of resource efficiency and derived resource substitution
potentials. However, conducting a CLCA leads to severe shortcomings that will be further
explained. Beforehand, existing CLCA studies and used models rarely provide high levels of
accuracy, completeness or precision. Case studies just reflect a few effects, as CLCAs cannot
describe the full consequences of a change (Ekvall 2002; Finkbeiner et al. 2014).

In detail, the provision of quantitative environmental information is the unique feature of LCA.
Data acquisition for the life cycle inventory (LCI) is therefore extremely important for a
quantitative data driven assessment. While the ALCA is a rather mature approach (Rajagopal
2014), data acquisition in CLCA is a rather complex issue that needs knowledge in the
identification of the marginal change and economic modelling, such as, i.e., equilibrium
modelling (Ekvall 2002; Ekvall et al. 2016; Ekvall & Weidema 2004; Plevin et al. 2014b;
Weidema 2003). EC et al. (2010) published The International Reference Life Cycle Data System –
known as the ILCD handbook – for further guidance of good-practice LCA beyond the ISO
standards 14040ff. The ILCD handbook gives guidance on applying both ALCA and CLCA
approaches. However, Ekvall et al. (2016) published a discussion paper about the revision of the
ILCD handbook due to inconstancies among the application of those approaches in LCA studies,
which have been interpreted not consistently (before and) after the publication of the ILCD
handbook. See for example the discussion between Brandão et al. (2014), Dale & Kim (2014),
Anex & Lifset (2014) and Suh & Yang (2014) in response on the work of Plevin et al. (2014b) and
the reply again by Plevin et al. (2014a).

Further, Rajagopal (2016) stated that ALCA is often used to understand the potential loads and
benefits of replacing one activity or service with a substitute. However, the consequences of
substitution generate spill over effects on the production and consumption which suggests the
use of CLCA. These effects can in turn also be seen as unintended, market-mediated or indirect
effects. Therefore, the bigger questions lie in issues surrounding forecasting and assessing
unintended consequences. Mortimer (2016) stated that “unintended consequences are distinct
from risks and trade-offs in that they are unforeseen at the time of planning and implementation.”

Introduction 6
LCA is well suited to assess the environmental performance of a product today or ex ante, but it
is less suitable for prospective questions (World Economic Forum et al. 2016). The latter
inherently implies consequences. The future is naturally uncertain and limits exist to
comprehensibly describe future consequences of a change (Ekvall 2002), such as rebound
effects, technological shifts, price changes and political circumstances. This becomes noticeable
at the core of the LCA methodology as good-LCA practice only concerns “potential”
environmental impacts and not the “actual” environmental damage or health risks. As a result,
carrying out an LCA is a steady state analysis (Wrisberg et al. 2002) which is best shown with
the ALCA approach rather than the dynamic CLCA approach. Last but not least, conducting an
LCA is trying to abstract the reality in a model. Therefore, it is not possible to account for all
information but rather to identify the system’s main objectives, functions, and parameters and
their relationship to each other (Ausberg et al. 2015).

Finkbeiner et al. (2014) proposed assessing the changes by means of a baseline using ALCA and
different scenarios instead of using CLCA until more robust and consistent methods and case
study experiences are available. This is further supported by studies that suggest viewing both
approaches as complementary rather than substitutable (Anex and Lifset 2014; Dale & Kim
2014; Rajagopal 2014, 2016; Suh & Yang 2014). The LCA community refers to the ILCD
handbook as a guide for good LCA practice and as a starting point for further methodological
progression concerning CLCA. Therefore, a revision of the ILCD handbook can be expected in the
future (Ahlgren et al. 2015; Ekvall et al. 2016; Laurent et al. 2014).

Introduction 7
2 Wood-plastic composites: status quo

WPC are wood particles incorporated in thermoplastic matrices and produced in a one-step or
two-step production process. The EN 15534-1 (CEN 2014a) defines WPC “as a material or
product made thereof being the result of the combination of one or several cellulose-based
material(s) with one or several thermoplastics, intended to be or being processed through plastic
processing techniques.” WPC are mainly applied in outdoor applications. Water uptake and
biological durability of the composites are considered superior to some wood species due to the
use of hydrophobic thermoplastics (Clemons 2002; Glasser et al. 1999; Müller 2011). The water
uptake can be further improved through modification of the wood particles (Krause & Grahl
2014; Müller et al. 2012). The density of WPC is higher than of solid soft wood decking, i.e., Scots
pine (Pinus sylvestris) 0.47 g/cm³ (Dunky & Niemz 2002), and of neat plastic, i.e., polyethylene
(PE) 0.94–0.97 g/cm³ (Klyosov 2007). The stiffness and heat stability of thermoplastic matrices
are improved by adding wood particles (Valle et al. 2007; Wolcott & Englund 1999). Although
wood-derived fillers are not as popular as inorganic fillers, they have advantages to the latter
such as low density (which reduces weight) no–low damage potential to the processing
equipment and low cost (Kaseem et al. 2015).

The amount of European produced WPC is small compared to China and USA, but steadily
increasing according to market data from nova-Institute (Carus et al. 2015a; Carus et al. 2015b;
Partanen & Carus 2016). Table 1 and Figure 1 present current market data on WPC production
techniques and application fields in the EU. Germany comprises almost half of the share of
European produced WPC (Eder 2013). Up to now, the main applications are extruded (i.e.,
outdoor decking) or compression moulded (i.e., car-door panels). WPC decking comprise a
market share of 6% (Türk 2014). These products are becoming more and more attractive to
customers due to their advantages in the use stage, such as low maintenance as well as better
swelling and shrinking behaviour than solid wood decking. The price of WPC decking ranges in
the middle price range for solid wood decking from domestic sources and of tropical or thermo-
modified wood.

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 8

Table 1. WPC production in Europe.
Data based on Eder (2013), Carus et al. (2015a) 3%
6%
WPC production
Share 10³ t
technique 67%

Extrusion 81% 210 Decking

24%
Compression moulding 13% 34 Automotive
Injection moulding 6% 16 Siding and fencing
Others < 1% 1 Others

Total 100% 261

Figure 1. WPC applications (Eder 2013)

Despite of the small size of the WPC market compared to other composites, the potential
applications of WPC have yet to be tapped up with regard of wood particle modification and
additives for improvements of composite properties. Injection moulding and 3D printing of WPC
compounds and filaments are in technically early states (Grujovic et al. 2016), but expand the
application possibilities of wood materials compared to conventional wood-based products like
particleboards or fibreboards.

Nevertheless, from an environmental point of view, WPC faces challenges embedded in the afore
mentioned sections of the bioeconomy, circular economy and resource efficiency. They can be
addressed to the upstream (raw material supply) and downstream (product applications, end-
of-life) processes.

2.1 Raw material supply for existing WPC products

2.1.1 Wooden lignocellulosic particles

In Germany, the yearly roundwood consumption is about 75 x 106 m³. The main distribution
channels for roundwood as a material are saw logs (45%), engineered wood products (11%)
and pulpwood (8%). About 36% of roundwood is directly burned as an energy carrier without
having a material utilization first. If the amount of waste wood and wood residues is added,
about 50% of the national timber stock is used as an energy carrier (Bioökonomierat 2016;
Seintsch & Weimar 2013). According to Mantau (2012a), more wood was used for energy than
for material purposes in Germany in 2010. This can be mostly related to the doubled fuel wood
demand from private households between 1994 and 2005 which increased competition for
wood resources, especially for lower quality timber grades (Härtl & Knoke 2014; Wimmer et al.
2013). In addition, political incentives such as the German Renewable Energy Act – EEG (German
Government 2014) support the use of fuelwood.

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 9

Thermal energy (energyth) from fuelwood of virgin sources is likely to remain an important
alternative for private households for heating purposes. In terms of resource efficiency and the
shift from softwood to hardwood in context of changing forest management, softwood particles
should today be efficiently used by resource cascading (Bioökonomierat 2016; BMEL 2016;
Polley et al. 2015). According to Wimmer et al. (2013), alternative natural fibres such as hemp,
flax or sisal may be seen as substitutes to wood particles in WPC but these natural fibres are
much higher in price. The intensified utilization of waste wood and wood residues is a potential
solution to a value-added, competitive wood cascade (Bioökonomierat 2016).

About 80% of the produced WPC decking in Germany are in accordance with the “Quality and
test specifications for production control of decking” of the Qualitätsgemeinschaft
Holzwerkstoffe e.V (Qualitätsgemeinschaft Holzwerkstoffe e.V. 2016). The wood content must
be minimum 50% of dry mass and derived from certified, sustainably managed forests and/or
waste wood of classification A I according to the German Waste Wood Directive – AltholzV
(German Government 2003), in order to obtain the quality label “Qualitätszeichen
Holzwerkstoffe”. Therefore, waste wood of minor quality in context of higher concentration of
impurities such as A II shall not be utilized for WPC. Other WPC products without this label may
consist of 20–80% wooden lignocellulosic particles (Carus et al. 2015b).

2.1.2 Thermoplastic polymers

Plastics have become one of the essential materials of the modern economy (Allwood et al. 2011;
World Economic Forum et al. 2016). They are responsible for the economic benefits of the
sectors packaging, transportation, healthcare, and electronics in context of their low cost,
versatility and durability (Andrady & Neal 2009). Despite their great success, the extraction of
the hydrocarbon feedstocks faces political insecurities (Rajendran et al. 2012). The conversion
to plastic products is highly energy intensive and the products thereof may cause severe impacts
to the ecosystems and human health if not properly handled after use (Essel et al. 2015;
Rochman et al. 2015). In addition, German plastic converters have concerns regarding the
supply of plastics in the near future due to the weak euro exchange rate to the USD and Chinese
renminbi (INVERTO 2015).

The most commonly used plastics in WPC are the commodity polyolefins plastics [polypropylene
(PP), polyethylene (PE)], and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). They are low in price compared to other
plastics such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and have a low processing temperature
< 200 °C, for what they are suitable to be mixed with wood in context of the thermal degradation
of wood (Borrega & Kärenlampi 2008; Klyosov 2007). Also bio-based polymers such as Bio-PE
and polylactide (PLA) can be used (Partanen & Carus 2016). However, the currently high price of
bio-plastics prevents further use (Kim 2014). According to the afore mentioned quality

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 10

specifications of German produced WPC decking, the plastics have to be derived from 100%
virgin sources or homogenous post-industrial plastics from primary plastics manufacturing
(Qualitätsgemeinschaft Holzwerkstoffe e.V. 2016).

2.1.3 Utilization of secondary materials for WPC

Historically, WPC was invented based on the recycling approach to produce value added
products from waste (Klyosov 2007) what is in contrast to the quality label of German WPC
decking. The technical feasibility of substituting secondary materials for WPC has been
intensively studied in the research community (Balasuriya et al. 2003; Chen et al. 2006;
Gozdecki et al. 2014; Krause et al. 2013; Migneault et al. 2014; Zimmermann & Zattera 2013). All
these studies focused only on a technical perspective by characterizing the laboratory scaled
composites by means of physical testing and the like. Often, secondary materials were declared
“waste”, and instead post-industrial products or simply co-products, such as trimmings were
used (Boeglin et al. 1997; Nourbakhsh et al. 2010). Degradation of polymers due to ultraviolet
(UV) wavelengths is of interest for the quality of new products made from secondary materials.
Kazemi‐Najafi et al. (2013) concluded that degraded HDPE affected negatively the processing of
composites, but mechanical properties were similar to the WPC with a virgin HDPE matrix. An
overview of the impact of recycling and accelerated weathering on the processing properties of
secondary polyolefins for WPC is provided in Table 2.

Table 2. Impact of recycling and accelerated weathering on processing properties of

secondary polyolefins for WPC (Kazemi-Najafi 2013)

Processing
Description Authors/further reading
properties
Melting Impurities and additives may raise or reduce the melting Achilias et al. (2008),
point point Kazemi-Najafi et al. (2009)
Immiscibility Additional costs due to separation of recycled plastic Mantia et al. (1992),
compartments, Goodship (2007),
Different degradation of polymers during processing Waldman & Paoli (1998),
and service life can affect the compatibility
Rheology Increase or reduction of melt flow index (MFI) of Klyosov (2007), Kazemi-
recycled PP and PE (decrease in melt viscosity) due Najafi (2013)
impurities

Crosslinking Crosslinking is affected by weather exposure and Kazemi‐Najafi et al. (2013)

degradation and may have negative impact on
processability

Crystallinity Crystallinity of recycled PP and PE is usually less than Valadez-Gonzalez et al.

that of virgin (which can be related to crosslinking) (1999), Gulmine et al.
(2003), Kazemi‐Najafi et
al. (2013)
Polarity Formation of polar groups in recycled plastics Valadez-Gonzalez et al.
(especially in PE and PP) may improve compatibility (1999), Gulmine et al.
between plastic and wood (2003), Kazemi‐Najafi et
Sometimes the formation of polar groups is al. (2013)
accompanied with crosslinking

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 11

2.2 End-of-life of WPC
The EN 15534-4 (CEN 2014b) states that “WPC materials are recyclable materials which can be
treated in a material recovery process intended to save resources while minimising harmful
emissions into air, water and soil as well as their impacts on human health.“ From a technical point
of view, the challenge of WPC recycling is that the composites are complex regarding the
material matrix (Kazemi-Najafi 2013; Schirp & Hellmann 2013). Feedstock recycling in terms of
resource cascading of the neat resources is technically challenging. During the compounding
process of WPC, the thermoplastic matrix is heated above the crystalline melting point (Tm).
Then, wood particles are added to the melted thermoplastic and mechanically, irreversibly
bonded to the plastic-matrix. The WPC matrix is cooled until the thermoplastic molecules
solidify, which is known as the glass transition temperature (Tg) (Klyosov 2007). Additionally,
WPC seeks a high grade of plastics purity in context of molecular immiscibility (Brogaard et al.
2014; Christensen & Fruergaard 2010; Schalles 2004; Soccalingame et al. 2013; Winandy et al.
2004). Degradation of WPCs due to repeated processing cycles and environmental exposure also
may complicate recycling (Winandy et al. 2004) as described previously in Table 2 for secondary
polyolefins.

Schirp & Hellmann (2013) demonstrated that the flexural properties and water absorption of
WPC were positively affected by using 20% secondary WPC and 66% “fresh” WPC. A high
amount (14%) of stabilizers had to be added. Other studies based on long-term study design
reported the technically feasibility of recycling WPC to secondary WPC based on physical,
mechanical and biological results (iVTH 2015a, 2015b, 2015c).

According to the quality label of WPC decking, secondary re-grinded WPC profiles are only
allowed to be used from the manufacturer’s own WPC system, which are withdrawn from the
market (Qualitätsgemeinschaft Holzwerkstoffe e.V. 2016). This implies that WPC profiles need to
be collected separately from other waste collection systems. If post-consumer WPC are collected
through conventional bulk waste collection and therefore mixed with other products,
laboratory-scaled results showed, that near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is suitable to sort
different WPC based on the plastics’ molecular structure into homogenous fractions (PE-WPC,
PP-WPC etc.) (Meinlschmidt et al. 2014). It is possible to determine the plastics content in WPC
with dynamic scanning calorimetry, which was tested on PP-WPC (Jeske et al. 2011). Li et al.
(2015) showed that a combination of fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and partial least
squares regression is promising in the context of determining the share of wood and plastics in
post-consumer WPC. Such automated sorting techniques are currently not economically feasible
for post-consumer wood (Meinlschmidt et al. 2013), and only applied in plastics recycling, but
an economic evaluation for post-consumer WPC is lacking. It is also questionable if incineration
(with energy recovery) of WPC would be environmentally preferable to recycling.

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 12

2.3 Environmental assessments of WPC
In terms of ecological aspects of WPC a literature review was performed to evaluate the status
quo of the WPC which were assessed, and how the LCA study was conducted. Science Direct,
Springer Link, Wiley Online Library databases were used as well as Google Scholar and the
conventional Google search engine. The literature search was conducted according to the
following criteria:

• Published studies starting from the year 2006 until 2015

• Peer-reviewed articles and LCA studies in English and German languages
• The analysis is in accordance with ISO 14040 and 14044 as minimum standard
requirements
• Search key words: “life cycle assessment”, “ecological footprint”, “environmental
assessment” and “wood–plastic composites” including their abbreviations
• Where lignocellulosic softwood and/or hardwood particles were used, excluding
biomass from short rotation coppice and plants

The matched studies were descriptively analysed by using the following evaluation criteria that
were grouped in two categories:

I) Product(s) under study

1) Product category: Which parameters were used as the functional unit?

2) WPC formulations: Which materials were used to produce the WPC under study?
3) What was/were the foreground WPC processing technique/s
4) What was the energyel demand for WPC processing?

II) Applied LCA methodological approaches

5) Functional unit: What parameters were used as the functional unit?

6) Life Cycle Inventory (LCI): Which kind of LCI approach was applied (i.e., ALCA, CLCA)?
7) Allocation: Which allocation method/s was/were applied?
8) Post-consumer scenario: How was the end-of-life (EoL) assessed?
9) Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA): Which LCIA method was applied?
10) How was resource efficiency addressed?

The first search results indicated 39 research articles dealing with LCA of WPC. Among those
articles, studies focusing on natural fibres were not selected, such as flax fibre Yan et al. (2014),
hemp fibre (Schmehl et al. 2008), China reed fibre (Corbière-Nicollier et al. 2001), kenaf fibre
(Wang et al. 2013), jute fibre (Alves et al. 2010) and rice husks (Vidal et al. 2009). As a result,
seven studies matched the requirements for the literature search: Thamae & Baillie (2008), Xu et
al. (2008), Bolin & Smith (2011), Stübs et al. (2012), Bergman et al. (2013), Mahalle et al. (2014),

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 13

and Qiang et al. (2014). These studies are listed in Table 3. In 2015, two environmental product
declarations (EPD) were published for WPC decking and claddings (IBU 2015a, 2015b). These
studies are not shown in Table 3 because the EPD of WPC decking can be linked to a great extent
to the study of Stübs et al. (2012).

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 14

Table 3. Results of literature review of LCA of WPC: Products under study; *waste wood or secondary wood

Product WPC Wood source Plastics source Additives WPC processing Authors
category alternatives Virgin wood Co-products WW* Virgin (%) Secondary (%) (%)
Bolin &
Outdoor
1 – 50% – HDPE 25 HDPE 25 – ? Smith
decking
(2011)
Coupling agent (PE) 2
PE 40 – Filler (talc) 2 Bergman
Outdoor Compounding –
2 – 50% – Lubricant (Polsyster) 2 et al.
decking extrusion
– PE 40 Biocide (borax) 2 (2013)
Thermostabilizer (TiO2) 2
Coupling agent (MAPE) 1
70% PE 27 – UV stabilizer (TiO2) 1
Outdoor Pigments 1 Compounding – Stübs et
2 – –
decking Thermostabilizer (phenol) 1 extrusion al. (2012)
50% PVC 47 – Lubricant (wax) 1
Pigments 1
Thamae &
Automo- Injection
1 40% – – PP 60 – – Baillie
tive part moulding
(2008)
80 – Extrusion
Transport blending – Qiang et
2 20% – – PLA –
material 55 PHA 25 injection al. (2012)
moulding
Lab-scale Compression Xu et al.
1 30% – – PP 70 – –
prototype moulding (2008)
PLA 35
Lab-scale TPS 35 Injection Mahalle et
2 30% – – – –
prototype moulding al. (2014)
PLA 70

15
2.3.1 Products under study
Ad 1) Product categories

Accordingly to the main applications of WPC (Carus et al. 2015b; Eder 2013), most LCA studies
focused on WPC outdoor decking. The three LCA studies dealing with outdoor decking compared
WPC decking to solid wood decking of deep-pressure treated pine (Pinus sylvestris) and tropical
Bilinga (Nauclea diderrichii) (Stübs et al. 2012); California redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
(Bergman et al. 2013); alkaline copper quaternary treated lumber of unknown species (Bolin &
Smith 2011). Auto interior parts were considered in one study. Thamae & Baillie (2008)
investigated the replacement of glass fibre reinforced PP car door panel with wood particles.
Three LCA studies were conducted without a relation to the current application fields of WPC.
Qiang et al. (2014) assessed the environmental performance of WPC transport pallets based on
their laboratory scale study PLA-based WPC (Qiang et al. 2012). Xu et al. (2008) and Mahalle et
al. (2014) studied the environmental performance of WPC preforms and prototypes made under
laboratory conditions.

Ad 2) WPC formulations

The wood content of the analysed WPC decking were in the range of 50–70% from virgin
roundwood (Stübs et al. 2012) and co-products from wood processing industry (Bergman et al.
2013; Bolin & Smith 2011). Other LCA studies of WPC focused solely on wood particles from
industrial roundwood with a wood content range of 20–40%. Waste wood or wood residues
from forest management were not considered. The wood species were spruce or pine. No
hardwood wood species were analysed. All studies used different nomenclature for the wood
content such as wood flour, wood powder, and wood fibre. No study included a particle analysis,
such as provided in Benthien et al. (2016). It can be assumed that the geometries can be best
described as wood particles.

On the plastics side, PE and PVC matrices were analysed in the reviewed studies of WPC decking.
PP is missing. The LCA studies focused on the use of post-consumer HDPE (Bolin & Smith 2011)
and PE from plastic bags (Bergman et al. 2013) were both performed in N-American context.
Other studies focused solely on virgin thermoplastics. Qiang et al. (2014) and Mahalle et al.
(2014) studied WPC blends of biodegradable PLA and thermoplastic starch (TPS).

Two of three LCA studies of WPC decking (Bergman et al. 2013; Stübs et al. 2012) considered
additives in varying amounts. Qiang et al. (2014) evaluated polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) what
was case specific for the PLA-WPC blends which were mechanically characterized in a previous
study (Qiang et al. 2012). As a result, additives were rather poorly represented in the reviewed
studies although they are crucial for the bonding between polar wood and the non-polar plastics
(Klyosov 2007).

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 16

Ad 3) Foreground WPC process techniques and ad 4) Energy demand

Table 4 presents the specific energy demand for foreground manufacturing techniques. The
energy demand for extruded WPC were almost the same: 1.4 kWh/kg (Bergman et al. 2013) and
1.6 kWh/kg (Stübs et al. 2012). Energy demand for injection moulded WPC ranged from
0.8 kWh/kg for a car door panel (Thamae & Baillie 2008) to 1.92 for a transport pallet (Qiang et
al. 2012), and to 7.71 kWh/kg for a prototype (Mahalle et al. 2014). Energy demand for manual
hydraulic heated press was 3.95 kWh for 90 sheets with a sheet geometry of
127 x 127 x 2 mm³ (Xu et al. 2008). Bolin & Smith (2011) did not mention the manufacturing
process. Considering the total energy input amount of WPC production, upstream processes
were identified with a share of 92% of the total energy demand (Qiang et al. 2014). Mahalle et al.
(2014) detected the foreground bio-composite production process as most energy intensive
(90%) regarding cradle-to-gate whereas both studies were based on the same PLA from
NatureWorks LLC. The sources of energy were not discussed in the studies.

Table 4. Energy demand (kWh/kg) of foreground WPC manufacturing processes

*Energy demand for 90 preform sheets

Products under study

Car Trans-
Preform
Process step Process Decking door port Prototype
sheet*
panel pallet
Raw Material
Wood fibre drying – – – – – 1.17
preparation
Compounding 1.11 – 0.44 5.59 –
Heating-cooling
Intermediate 0.12 – – – – –
mixer
step
Grinding – 0.01 – – 0.25 –
Drying – – – – 0.52 –
Extrusion 0.37 1.42 – – – –
Conditioning Injection moulding – – 0.8 1.48 1.35 –
Compression
– – – – – 2.78
moulding

Cumulative 10
Energy 8
kWh/kg

demand 6
cradle-to-gate 4
2
0
1.6 1.4 0.8 1.9 7.7 3.9

Thamae
Stübs Bergman Qiang Mahalle Xu
&
Authors et al. et al. et al. et al. et al.
Baillie
(2012) (2013) (2014) (2014) (2008)
(2008)

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 17

2.3.2 Applied LCA methodologies

Table 5. Results of literature review of LCA of WPC: Applied LCA methodological approaches. *cradle-to-gate analysis

Outdoor decking Outdoor decking Outdoor decking Preform sheets Car door panel Transport pallet prototype
100 ft² (9.29 m²)
Production, 15 of decking material
A car door panel of
years use and with a service life a) kg/m³ 1 kg of
volume 992 cm³ 1,000 kg of a
Functional unit 1,000 board feet disposal of 1 m² of 25 years and the b) Material service biocomposite
for service life of transport pallet
decking (incl. the thickness density (prototype)
200,000 km
substructure) depending on
material selection
LCI approach ALCA ALCA ALCA ALCA ALCA ALCA ALCA
LCI geographical N-America N-America Australasia N-America
Germany Europe China
data (USA) (USA) (AU + NZ) (USA and Canada)
Allocation
– Economical values – – Energy recovery – –
approaches
Incineration based
10% incineration,
on LCA
Post-consumer Landfill based on 90% landfill based
Landfill based on background
EoL scenario and literature –* on newsprint LCA –* –*
assumptions dataset,
data information background
Assumptions for
dataset
material recycling
Eco-indicator 95,
TRACI 2009 +
Eco-Indicator 99,
LCIA method TRACI 2009 CML 2001 TRACI 2.1 Eco-Indicator 99 Multi Criteria TRACI
CML 2001,
Decision Tool
EPS 2000
Bolin & Smith Stübs et al. Bergman et al. Xu et al. Thamae & Baillie Qiang et al. Mahalle et al.
Authors
(2011) (2012) (2013) (2008) (2008) (2014) (2014)

18
Ad 5) Functional unit

As shown in Table 5, all studies used different functional units (FU). Thamae & Baillie (2008),
Stübs et al. (2012) and Qiang et al. (2014) integrated time-related conditions in the FU. Only
Stübs et al. (2012) studied the biological degradation behaviour of WPC decking in outdoor
conditions to calculate the life expectancy of a WPC decking. The technical life expectancy was
investigated through experimental laboratory tests and climate tests under real conditions.
Questionnaires were carried out among WPC-customers to gain additional information of the
product’s use stage. The authors also compared hollow WPC decking to solid WPC decking by
including the substructure in the FU.

Xu et al. (2008) considered next to a mass-related FU (kg/m³) the “material service density”
which considers the requirement of the wood-fibre-reinforced PP composite to withstand a
given mechanical load, specifically the tensile load – expressed as material service density. To
withstand the same tensile load, 81% additional PP in mass was needed.

Ad 6) LCI approach

All reviewed studies had the goal to compare the ecological footprint of specific WPC
formulations to each other or compare WPC products to other products, such as solid wood
decking (Bergman et al. 2013; Bolin & Smith 2011; Stübs et al. 2012) or reinforced plastics with
non-renewable fibres (Thamae & Baillie 2008). By substituting secondary plastics in the WPC
matrix, the authors stated the environmental advantages when comparing to WPC made of
virgin resources.

As discussed earlier in Section 1.4 (LCA), such statements need macro-economic analyses to deal
with consequences or evaluate the application considerations, such as done by Xu et al. (2008).
None of the other studies included a CLCA approach, nor clearly stated the use of ALCA data,
though they obviously used data of the latter. Plevin et al. (2014b) provided a good example for
interpreting the LCA results based on the ALCA approach: “We estimate that the ALCA rating of
product X is Y% lower than that of product Z, though this does not imply that producing more of X
results in a Y% reduction. To infer the actual climate impact of an action affecting the use of X and
Y requires a change-based (consequential) analysis.”

Ad 7) Allocation and ad 8) Post-consumer scenario

Allocation in foreground WPC manufacturing (gate-to-gate) was not considered in most cases
due to the internal recyclability of WPC residues. Allocation in upstream processes (supply
chain) were solved by the use of LCA background databases. Studies which did not use LCA
databases for upstream processes, used data from laboratory data (Xu et al. 2008) or from
literature (Qiang et al. 2014) and allocated the environmental burdens on physical parameters.

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 19

Concerning post-consumer WPC, waste management and recycling activities leading to multi-
functional outputs for allocation methods are well discussed (Frischknecht 2010; Klöpffer &
Grahl 2012; Nicholson et al. 2009; Rigamonti et al. 2009; Sandin et al. 2014; Schrijvers et al.
2016b). Frischknecht (2010) stated that the choice of the allocation approach depends on the
LCA practitioner’s affiliation. Choosing the appropriate allocation method tends to be a
subjective decision with great impact on the LCA results. Scientific efforts have been made to
develop a single-formula for all recycling situations (Manfredi et al. 2015; Pelletier et al. 2014)
but this is heavily criticized (Schrijvers et al. 2016a) and is likely to supports biased LCA
(Finkbeiner 2014).

Among the WPC studies, Thamae & Baillie (2008) applied the “avoided burden” approach in the
EoL stage. Incineration of wood fibre and PP content was closed-loop modelled so that the
recoverable energy by incineration of WPC replaces primary energy within the system
boundary. This means, that derived potential credits of energy recovery were subtracted from
the environmental loads of WPC production. Stübs et al. (2012) modelled the EoL according to
the available technology in the year 2012, which comprises bulk waste collection and
incineration of PE-/PP-/PVC-WPC in German facilities with energy recovery. Additionally, a
potential material recycling scenario was assumed. In this scenario, 50% of post-consumer WPC
were recycled to substitute virgin WPC. The other 50% were incinerated with energy recovery.

Ad 9) Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and ad 10) Resource efficiency

The CML-IA method (Guinée 2002), also referred as CML 2001, was used by Stübs et al. (2012).
CML-IA is a midpoint LCIA method and specifically developed for the European context.
Endpoint indicators, such as the Eco-indicator for example, are weighted and aggregated LCIA
results. Klöpffer & Grahl (2012) stressed that weighting and aggregation of LCIA results are
scientifically questionable practices and suggest avoiding this issue by documenting the
weighing process of each indicator. For instance, Qiang et al. (2014) used the un-weighted TRACI
method first, then the multi-criteria decision tool “attribute hierarchy model” by showing the
pairwise significance of the LCIA of WPC.

Resource depletion or resource efficiency indicators were not applied in the reviewed studies.
Klinglmair et al. (2014) in accordance with, Heijungs et al. (1997) and Finnveden et al. (2009)
stated in a review about the assessment of resource depletion in LCA, that no LCIA methodology
provides full coverage of these issues. Assessing abiotic resource efficiency and especially biotic
resource depletion potential has not been well or at all established in the LCIA methods.

Wood-plastic composites: status quo 20

3 Aim and scope of the thesis

Based on the literature reviews and status quo of raw material utilization for WPC, the EoL
situation and ecological considerations, a thorough feasibility study of substituting secondary
materials as well as the identification of an environmentally sound EoL pathway is missing. The
aim of this thesis is to highlight the feasibility of substituting secondary materials by identifying
potential secondary materials from specific waste streams, their availability and price situation
within the German system boundary. The identified secondary materials are further processed
to WPC specimens, which are physically characterized and environmentally assessed by means
of LCA. The structure of the discussion of the thesis reflects the end-of-waste criteria (Table 6)
as outlined in Article 5 (1) of the KrWG (German Government 2012), which is essential for the
identification of substitution potentials of secondary materials as well as for the EoL of WPC.

Table 6. End-of-waste criteria in context of substitution potentials and EoL

End-of-waste criterion Reflects Examples related to WPC

The substance or object is commonly used Qualitative aspects Do secondary plastics and
for specific purposes. wood achieve comparable
physical properties?
There is an existing market or demand for Market mechanisms Which potential secondary
the substance or object. materials are available for
WPC and is the substitution
economically feasible?
The use is lawful (substance or object fulfils Legislative and Is the content of hazardous
the technical requirements for the specific normative aspects substances below the
purposes and meets the existing legislation threshold values of the
and standards applicable to products). requirements of normative
product standards?
The use will not lead to overall adverse Ecological aspects What is the ecological profile
environmental or human health impacts. of WPC from secondary
materials?

Thereof, the overarching research questions are derived:

(1) Which secondary materials from which waste streams can be identified to substitute
primary (virgin) materials in WPC production?
(2) What are the differences in physical and mechanical properties of WPC produced from
secondary materials in comparison to their virgin counterparts?
(3) What obstacles need to be considered in terms of applicability?
(4) What is the difference of secondary vs. virgin materials in WPC based on LCA?
(5) What is the ecological preferable EoL pathway of the composites

Aim and scope of the thesis 21

Peer-reviewed paper I

Sommerhuber, P.F., Welling, J., and Krause, A. 2015. Substitution potentials of recycled HDPE
and wood particles from post-consumer packaging waste in wood-plastic composites. Waste
Management 46:76–85.
DOI:10.1016/[Link].2015.09.011.

Overarching research questions reflected in this paper:

(1), (2), (3)

Specific research questions discussed in this paper:

• Which legislative frameworks and market constrains need to be considered if post-

consumer waste wood of category A II and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) from
packaging waste substitute virgin materials in WPC?
• What is the difference in physical and mechanical properties of WPC from these
secondary materials in comparison to WPC from virgin materials?
• What are the differences in colour of the composites in terms of consumer acceptability?

Abstract

The market share of wood-plastic composites (WPC) is small but expected to grow sharply in
Europe. This raises some concerns about suitable wood particles needed in the wood-based
panels industry in Europe. Concerns are stimulated by the competition between the promotion
of wood products through the European Bioeconomy Strategy and wood as an energy carrier
through the Renewable Energy Directive. Cascade use of resources and valorisation of waste are
potential strategies to overcome resource scarcity. Under experimental design conditions, WPC
made from post-consumer recycled wood and plastic (HDPE) were compared to WPC made from
virgin resources. Wood content in the polymer matrix was raised in two steps from 0% to 30%
and 60%. Mechanical and physical properties and colour differences were characterized. The
feasibility of using cascaded resources for WPC is discussed. Results indicate the technical and
economic feasibility of using recycled HDPE from packaging waste for WPC. Based on technical
properties, 30% recycled wood content for WPC is feasible, but financial and political barriers
need to be overcome.

Aim and scope of the thesis 22

Peer-reviewed paper II

Sommerhuber, P.F., Wang, T., and Krause, A. 2016. Wood-plastic composites as potential
applications of recycled plastics of electronic waste and recycled particleboard. Journal of
Cleaner Production 121:176–185.
DOI:10.1016/[Link].2016.02.036.

Overarching research questions reflected in this paper:

(1), (2), (3)

Specific research questions discussed in this paper:

• Can WPC be produced from secondary acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and

polystyrene (PS) from waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)?
• What is the difference in physical and mechanical properties of ABS- and PS-WPC with
recycled particleboard (A II) in comparison to Norway spruce?
• What content of inorganic potentially hazardous substances can be expected and how
does the content affect the applicability of the composites in terms of legal frameworks
and product standards?

Abstract
Wood-plastic composites were injection-molded from recycled acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene
and polystyrene from post-consumer electronics in the interest of resource efficiency and
ecological product design. The wood content was raised in two steps from 0% to 30% and 60%.
Reinforcement performance of recycled particleboard was compared to virgin Norway spruce.
Styrene maleic anhydride copolymer was used as the coupling agent in the composites with a
60% wood proportion to investigate the influence on interfacial adhesion. The composites were
characterized by using physical and mechanical standard testing methods. Results showed
increased stiffness (flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity), water uptake, and density with
the incorporation of wood particles to the plastic matrices. Interestingly, strength (flexural and
tensile) increased as well. Wood particles from Norway spruce exhibited reinforcement in terms
of strength and stiffness. The same results were achieved with particleboard particles in terms
of stiffness, but the strength of the composites was negatively affected. The coupling agent
affected the strength properties beneficially, which was not observed for the stiffness of the
composites. The presence of cadmium, chromium, copper, arsenic and lead in the recycled
resources was found by an elementary analysis. This can be linked to color pigments in recycled
plastics and insufficient separation processes of recycled wood particles for particleboard
production.

Aim and scope of the thesis 23

Peer-reviewed paper III

Sommerhuber, P.F., Wenker, J.L., Rüter, S., and Krause, A. Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic
composites by applying product and system methodological approaches. Resources,
Conservation and Recycling (Under Review).

Overarching research questions reflected in this paper:

(4), (5)

Specific research questions discussed in this paper:

• What is the ecological difference of WPC made from virgin vs. secondary resources?
• How can ecological parameters be linked to physical parameters in terms of
substitution potentials?
• What is the environmentally preferable EoL option of the composites?

Abstract

In the drive towards a sustainable bioeconomy, a growing interest in the development of

composite materials made of plastics compounded with wood particles, known as wood-plastic
composites (WPC), can be observed. Wood is seen as one of the cornerstones for sustainable
economic growth, while the use of thermoplastics from hydrocarbon fossil resources and
additives for WPC potentially cause severe environmental impacts along the entire life cycle. In
this study, the life cycle stages of raw material supply and end-of-life pathways of WPC were
assessed environmentally from different perspectives with life cycle assessment (LCA). The
utilization of alternative raw materials reflected the WPC producer’s point of view. Harmonized
product LCA standards were applied and combined with physical parameters of actually
produced composites to give credit to substitution potentials in terms of resource quality. The
downstream pathways of post-consumer WPC products reflected the recycler’s perspective. A
system LCA approach was needed where systems with equal functions were generated to secure
a comparison of end-of-life treatment systems. Results showed that WPC produced from
secondary materials is the ecologically and technically superior alternative. Recycling of the
composites would be the ecologically preferable pathway, but is limited in application due to
current recycling directives and markets. The share of virgin WPC to secondary WPC in new
WPC is a sensitive issue.

Aim and scope of the thesis 24

Case study: KET ECOLIFE® – WPC window profile

Overarching Research Questions reflected in this case study:

(4)

Specific research questions discussed in this case study:

• What are the environmental hotspots of ECOLIFE® from cradle-to-gate?

• What is the environmental contribution of WPC in a product system?

Abstract

The aim of this LCA was to assess the environmental hotpots for the manufacturer’s internal
decision support of a window system made of a co-extruded WPC profile. The assembled
window is called ECOLIFE®, manufactured by Kappes Environment Technology (KET) in China.
The implementation of the LCA in this thesis has multiple reasons. Firstly, although the product
is manufactured in China, the quantitatively relevant materials (wood, plastics, and additives)
are imported from Germany and Europe. Secondly, KET obtains the same sort of secondary
HDPE granulates from packaging waste that were used for the laboratory-scaled WPC in peer-
reviewed paper I, which were further analysed with LCA in peer-reviewed paper III. Thirdly, the
laboratory-scaled studied secondary plastics and WPC itself are obtained for an actually
manufactured product. The LCI is, therefore, based on primary data acquisition. Fourthly, the
application field is new for WPC. The product design and category differs significantly from
mass-produced and already environmentally assessed WPC decking as the product is assembled
in more manufacturing stages with other semi–finished products including packaging materials.

Aim and scope of the thesis 25

4 Material and methods

4.1 Material flow analysis

Addressing the overarching research question:

(1) Which secondary materials from which waste streams can be identified to substitute
primary (virgin) materials in WPC production?

In the first step, the availability of secondary materials was identified by simplified material flow
analysis, which could potentially substitute the currently used virgin materials in WPC
manufacturing. This was done by consulting statistical data of waste flows and primary
production using the databases from Destatis and eurostat as well as reports, like market data
on German (waste) wood flows (Mantau 2012b, 2015; Mantau et al. 2012; Seintsch & Weimar
2012, 2013) and recycled plastics (Consultic 2014; Plastics Europe 2015; Villanueva & Eder
2014). The geographic system boundary was Germany with a broader view on Europe.

Production data of WPC were taken from nova-Institute (Carus et al. 2015a; Eder 2013;
Partanen & Carus 2016). German prices of waste wood, co-products, virgin, and secondary
plastics were gathered from different volumes of EUWID Recycling- and Entsorgung and EUWID
Holz und Holzwerkstoffe starting from the year 2005 until 2015.

The software ifu e!sankey (ifu Hamburg 2015) was used for visualization of material flows
where applicable.

4.2 Experimental design

4.2.1 Materials

Addressing the overarching research questions:

(2) What are the differences in physical and mechanical properties of WPC produced from
secondary materials in comparison to their virgin counterparts?
(3) What obstacles need to be considered in terms of applicability?

The materials used for experimental design as well as for the ecological characterization are
shown in Table 7.

Material and methods 26

Table 7. Materials used in experimental design and LCA. *measured, **not specified in data sheet and not measured

Mixed waste Particleboard SABIC® ALBA recythen® WEplast WEplast Licocene PP

Norway spruce MAPE CO/UL EP SMA 3000 P
wood (A II) (A II) HDPE HDPE PS ABS MA 7452

Source
Virgin Post-consumer Post-industrial Virgin Post-consumer Post-consumer Post-consumer Virgin Virgin Virgin
mixed AII (AII) (packaging) (WEEE) (WEEE)
Description
Kiln-dried, Mix of transport 18 mm, HDPE, white- Mix of PE- Recycled Recycled Coupling agent, Coupling agent, Coupling agent,
planed board, pallets (Norway melamine transparent variants with (crushed, (crushed, white- yellow white
without bark spruce, Scots coated, high HDPE ratio, sorted, washed) sorted, washed) transparent
pine, European recycled, colourful colourful
beech) and 8.5% UF extruded, grey
engineered
wood products
Shape at delivery
Boards Crushed, Boards Ø 5 mm Ø 5 mm Ø 6-8 mm Ø 6-8 mm Ø 5 mm Ø 5 mm Powder
>200 mm granulate re-granulate shredded shredded granulate granulate
particle size grading grading
Mc-% at delivery
9% 33%* 9%* –** 0.1% 0.1% 1% –** –** –**
MFI (g/10 mm)
1.8 2 7 25 2
– – – –** –*
@ 190 °C/2.2 kg @ 190 °C/5 kg @ 200 °C/5 kg @ 200 °C/5 kg @ 190 °C/2.2 kg
Impurities
Particles of Likeliness of Wood (0–0.1%)
plastics, nails presence of Rubber (0–0.2%)
and glass recycled wood
– particles in core- – – Flame retardants (0–0.1%) – – –
layer PVC (0–0.1%)
PS, PPO (0.5–1.5%)
Presence in peer-reviewed paper No.
I, II, III I, III II I, III I, III II II I, III – II

27
4.2.2 Composite preparation
Figure 2 presents the composite preparation by showing the applied WPC production
techniques and utilized materials. The secondary materials were derived from post-consumer
packaging sources. They were compounded in a laboratory-internal mixer, grinded in a Retsch
grinding mill with a mesh size of 8 mm, and compression moulded in a Siempelkamp
computerized hydraulic hot press. The specimens had to be cut from sheets to the geometries as
called in the testing standards for physical and mechanical characterization (Table 8).

Materials Material preparation WPC processing

Norway
spruce Chipping
Compounding Compression
0% – 30% – 60% and
moulding
grinding
Mixed waste < 1 mm
Sorting
wood A II Laboratory- Computerized
mesh size
internal mixer hydraulic hot
50 rpm press
15 min. 180 °C
HDPE virgin
170 °C 3 sheets/mix
100% – 70% – 40%

Secondary
HDPE

3%
MAPE

Figure 2. Experimental design of WPC made of post-consumer HDPE and waste wood from
post-consumer packaging. Peer-reviewed paper I

Extrusion compounding and injection moulding were used for WPC from secondary plastics
from WEEE and particleboards (Figure 3). The specimens were directly produced by the
injection moulding tool. Only secondary plastics were chosen for peer-reviewed paper II. This
was based on the decision that ABS products are very heterogeneous in context of its molecule
ratios which affects processing parameters as the copolymer consists of three different
monomers: acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene. Styrene maleic anhydride (SMA) was used only
in composites with 60% wood proportion to test its influence on the physical and mechanical
performance on WPC.

Material and methods 28

 Materials Material preparation WPC processing

Norway Chipping
spruce
and Extrusion- Injection-
0% – 30% – 60% grinding compounding moulding
< 1 mm
Particleboard
(A II) mesh size
Leistritz twin- ARBURG
screw extruder Allrounder
420C
Secondary Extrusion-
ABS
pelletizing
100% – 70% – 40% Hot Face
Pelletizer
Secondary
PS 5 mm

3% for WPC with 60% wood proportion

SMA

Figure 3. Experimental design of WPC made of post-consumer ABS and PS from WEEE and
recycled particleboard. Peer-reviewed paper II

The composites produced with PP-matrix from post-consumer packaging were produced as
Figure 5 with two exceptions. The recycled PP, called ALBA PP recythen®, provided by
INTERSEROH Dienstleistungs GmbH, Germany, were already homogenously delivered in
pelletized geometry and were directly useable for extrusion compounding. The MAPP, called
Licocene PP MA 7452 (Clariant), with a density of 0.93 g/cm3 was used as a coupling agent.

4.2.3 Composite characterization

Physical and mechanical testing was conducted in accordance with material characterization
standards as shown in Table 8. Water absorption was calculated by differential weighing of the
specimens for each period (at days 0, 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28). Density was calculated according to
Archimede’s principle based on the assumption that the water used for immersion has a density
of 1 g/cm³. Flexural tests (3-point bending) and tensile tests (Makroextensometer) were
conducted using a Zwick/Roell Universal testing machine. A Zwick/Roell HIT5.5P was only used
for un-notched Charpy impact strength test for HDPE based WPC in peer-reviewed paper I

Material and methods 29

Table 8. Composite characterization. *for neat plastics ** for WPC

Peer-reviewed paper No.

Standard paper I paper II

Sample size (n) 12 10

Physical characterization
Density DIN EN 15534-1 𝑊𝑊0
𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷𝐷 (𝑔𝑔/𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐³) =
𝑉𝑉0
Moisture absorption DIN EN 15534-1 𝑊𝑊𝑡𝑡 − 𝑊𝑊0
𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊𝑊 𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎 (%) = ∗ 100
𝑊𝑊0

Mechanical characterization
Flexural tests ISO 178
Crosshead speed (mm/min) 2 5
Load cell (kN) 5 5
Tensile tests EN ISO 527-3
Crosshead speed (mm/min) 10* 1
1**
Load cell (kN) 10 5
Charpy impact strength ISO 179
(un-notched) Not tested
Energy of pendulum (J) 1

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was conducted to investigate morphology characteristics of

WPC specimens and to evaluate the wood and polymer matrix distribution. Specimens for SEM
were prepared by cutting a square of 3–5 x 2 mm² from tested specimen. Vapour coating of the
SEM samples was done in a BioRAD SC 510 SEM Coating System. The surface microstructure was
analysed in a Quanta FEG Type 250.

According to published work of, i.e., Schlummer et al. (2007), Dimitrakakis et al. (2009), Oguchi
et al. (2013), heavy metal content in secondary materials was expected. The Inductively Coupled
Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) method was used to analyse the following
elements: arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and
lead (Pb) in secondary HDPE, PP, ABS, PS, mixed waste wood A II, and particleboard. The
samples were separately ground and dissolved in Aqua regia with multi-element standard
solution IV Certipur to determine the previously mentioned elements. The analysis was
conducted with an inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy iCAP 6300 duo
ICP/OES.

Material and methods 30

4.3 Life cycle assessment

Addressing the overarching research questions:

(4) What is the difference of secondary vs. virgin materials in WPC based on LCA?
(5) What is the ecological preferable EoL pathway of the composites

LCA was applied in peer-reviewed paper III and in the case study of a window profile called
ECOLIFE®. The ALCA method was used in all studies. The studies differ in their goal and scope
for what product LCA and system LCA methodologies were needed.

4.3.1 Product LCA

This thesis comprises two product LCA studies. First, the laboratory-scaled WPC compounds
were environmentally assessed that were produced and studied in peer-reviewed paper I.
Second, ECOLIFE® is an actually produced building product by Kappes Environment Technology
(KET) with the window frame made of a co-extruded WPC profile wrapped in aluminium stripes.
An overview of the main differences of the two product LCA studies is provided in Table 9.

Table 9. Product LCA studies

Laboratory-scaled Product system

LCA step
WPC compound ECOLIFE®
Goal and scope Assessment of the environmental Assessment of the environmental
parameters of virgin vs. secondary hotspots of WPC window product
materials crafted WPC compound system
Combination of environmental and Contribution of WPC to overall
technical parameters environmental parameters of
ECOLIFE®
Functional unit 1 kg WPC compound 1 window measuring 1.23 x 1.48 m2
LCI Data Literature and laboratory data Primary data from manufacturer
LCA databases Thünen Institute´s ÖkoHolzBauDat
GaBi professional database
ecoinvent database
WPC-manufacturing Compounding Extrusion-compounding
Compression moulding Injection-moulding
Co-extrusion
Site of manufacturing Germany China

Both studies were calculated in accordance with the EN 15804 (CEN 2013) and EN 16485 (CEN
2014c), which the latter specifies the LCA methodology for wood particles. The standards sets a
convention for several issues where the ISO 14044 leaves space for adjustment (Wenker et al.
2015). Time and space related issues of production, use and EoL are addressed in the EN 15804
by dividing the life cycle of a product into modules (Figure 4). The manufacturing stage
comprises raw material supply (module A1), transport to manufacturing site (module A2) and
the manufacturing of the product (module A3), hence a cradle-to-gate analysis for which

Material and methods 31

attributional, steady state data need to be collected – thus an ALCA. Besides from the
manufacturing stage, the use stage (module B) and EoL stage (module C) can be reported
separately based on scenario information. In addition, and necessary for transparent reporting
on potential environmental impacts, the standard provides instructions on allocation and on
separating environmental burdens from benefits and loads beyond the system boundary in
module D.

Figure 4. System boundary and modules according to EN 15804 (CEN 2013)

[Link] Laboratory-scaled WPC compound

The system boundary is visualized in Figure 5 for the WPC compounds made from virgin or
secondary materials. The specific LCA information of the semi-finished WPC compounds is well
described in Section 5.3 (Peer-reviewed paper III). In a sensitivity analysis, the environmental
parameters were linked to the mechanical parameter tensile modulus of elasticity (MoE).

Figure 5. System boundary of product LCA. Dotted lines and boxes mean cut-off

Material and methods 32

[Link] Case study ECOLIFE®
KET is a German/Chinese manufacturer producing the WPC window system called ECOLIFE® in
China. The system boundary is visualized in Figure 6. Specifically, the product category rule
Part B was applied: “Requirements on the EPD for windows and doors” of the Institute
Construction and Environment e. V. (IBU 2015c).




Figure 6. System boundary of KET ECOLIFE®

P1 – WPC Granulating. Wood fibres from the wood processing industry are homogeneously
mixed with secondary HDPE from post-consumer packaging waste and different additives by
using a co-rotating parallel twin screw extrusion line. WPC scrap can be added in a certain
percentage.

P2 – Co-extrusion to WPC window profile. From the WPC pellets a co-extruded profile (virgin
HDPE co-extrusion layer) is manufactured by using a counter-rotating parallel screw combined
with a single-screw extruder for the co-ex-layer. The profile is fed through a die, a dry
calibration and a water cooling stage, followed by a haul-off, a cutting saw and a stacking table.

P3 – Aluminium coating. The co-extruded profile is covered with a thin aluminium band by
gluing this band to the inner and outer surface of the profile after a special surface treatment.

P 4 – Window fabrication. Finally the complete windows are assembled.

Material and methods 33

The LCA is a cradle-to-gate analysis and comprises the modules A1 – A3 in accordance with the
EN 15804 (CEN 2013):

• Raw Material Supply (A1)

Table 10 presents the WPC mixture of the WPC profile (P 1–2). This module further comprises
the provision of precursor and intermediate materials, such as 1.46 m² of insulation glass
2-panes, 1 piece of aluminium fittings, PUR glue, gasket and screws.

Table 10. Raw materials for production of co-extruded WPC profile

Inputs Share
Virgin wood powder 40%
Secondary HDPE 28%
Virgin HDPE 20%
Additives 11%
Outputs
Co-extruded WPC profile 100%

• Transport (A2)

KET imports the following raw materials to China, which were modelled in the LCA software
with a container ship of 27,500 dead weight tonnes with heavy fuel, containing 1 w-% sulphur
for 20 x 10³ km transport distance: virgin wood powder (GER), secondary HDPE (GER),
additives (EU), aluminium sheet (GER), PUR hot melt (GER), fittings (GER) and injection
moulded PVC accessories (GER). The remaining resources are obtained regionally in China. A
lorry was assumed with 17.3 load capacity at 85% utilization for 50–300 km. The diesel was
considered as a China-specific average mix with 0.32 w-% from renewable bio-resources.

• Manufacturing (A3)

The company uses the average Chinese energyel grid-mix for onsite energyel demand. This grid-
mix consists mainly of 77% hard coal, 17% hydropower, 2% nuclear, and 2% natural gas.
Energyth is used for on-site heating purposes. This module further comprised the usage of
grease, compression air and diesel for machinery, process water, and water treatment system.
Production of packaging materials were assigned to this module.

4.3.2 System LCA

Although the EN 15804 provides guidance on allocation of multi-outputs in the EoL stage, it is
not applicable for the assessment of the preferable waste management option of WPC. Following
the standard, the environmental loads of waste collection are categorized in C1, transport to
recycling site in C2, recycling and energy recovery in C3, incineration and disposal in C4. At first
sight, an allocation could be used in module C3 and split into recycling and energy recovery.
However, this would not be possible to assess the best ecological EoL pathway, because

Material and methods 34

according to EN 15804, a scenario should be chosen for the EoL of the single product under
study. The post-consumer WPC can, therefore, be either 100% recycled or 100% incinerated, or
as Stübs et al. (2012) partly recycled and partly incinerated the WPC decking, but the EoL
treatment systems cannot be compared to each other.

The generated function (or benefits) of recycling WPC to secondary material (kg) differs to
secondary fuel (MJ). The ISO 14044 states (ISO 2006) “Systems shall be compared using the same
functional unit and equivalent methodological considerations […]”. This is done by equalizing the
systems by, for instance, expanding the product system, which does not provide the additional
functions (ISO 2006). The additional function is added to this system by adding the single supply
chain of the missing function, the so called complementary function (Fleischer & Schmidt 1996).
As a result, the same function respectively the same functional unit is provided by both systems
by expanding the function.

The method is referred as the “basket-of-benefits” – Nutzenkorbmethode (Jungbluth &

Firschknecht 2006; Klöpffer & Grahl 2012). A general visualization of this method is presented
in Figure 7. The LCI for the EoL processes was based on literature data and is well described in
peer-reviewed paper III (Section 5.3).

Comparison of EoL alternatives of treating 1 t post-consumer WPC

A – Recycling Complementary function

B – Energy recovery

Provision of
Recycling Recycling Waste-to-energy
conventional energy

+ +
NCV NCV
w:p w:p

Secondary energyth energyel energyth

energyel Secondary
WPC
[MJ] [MJ] WPC [MJ] [MJ]
[kg]

Complementary function

Primary WPC Primary WPC

production production
[kg]

Figure 7. Comparing two recycling systems by ensuring functional equivalency – the

basket-of-benefits approach; based on Klöpffer & Grahl (2012)

NCV … net calorific value

Black box and lines… primary function
Blue box… complementary function
Grey dashed boxes… outside system boundary

Material and methods 35

4.3.3 How to account for material inherent properties
Considering EN 15804, wood inherent biogenic carbon and primary energy used as raw material
are treated as material inherent properties. According to EN 16485, the assumption of biogenic
carbon neutrality of wood is valid for wood from countries that have decided to account for
article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, or for wood originating from forests, that operate under
established certificates schemes for sustainable forest management. Under the described
circumstances, the biogenic carbon content of wood, expressed as CO2 in the global warming
potential (GWP) parameter, is transferred to the product system as -1 in the product stage in
module A1 and A3. The wood inherent carbon leaves the product system as +1 within modules
A1 and A3 for wood burned for energy generation within the production, and within the EoL
stage (module C3) for the actual product itself, because it is contained in the recycled wood
which has reached the end of waste status. Hence, the biogenic carbon balance of a wood
product is deemed to be neutral considering all modules from A to C. Summing up these aspects,
biogenic carbon neutrality can be assumed for virgin wood particles derived from German
forests as well as co-products from the sawmill industry. Furthermore, wood inherent carbon
contained in recycled waste wood is considered the same way as it still is a material inherent
property in secondary materials.

4.3.4 LCA software, databases and impact assessment method

All LCAs were carried out by using thinkstep GaBi ts LCA software version [Link] with GaBi
professional database v6.115 (thinkstep 2015) as well as ecoinvent v2.2 database (ecoinvent
Centre 2010). Additionally, background data for wood-based materials was taken from Thünen
Institute´s ÖkoHolzBauDat project (Rüter & Diederichs 2012). The environmental impact mid-
point method CML-IA (Guinée 2002) was used, as demanded by the EN 15804 (CEN 2013):
global warming potential (GWP), depletion potential of the stratospheric ozone layer (ODP),
acidification potential of land and water (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), formation potential
of tropospheric ozone photochemical oxidants (POCP), abiotic depletion potential for non-fossil
resources (ADPE), abiotic depletion potential for fossil resources (ADPF).

A complete EPD as required by the Institute of Institute Construction and Environment e. V. (IBU
2015c) for example, contain environmental parameters of resource use (i.e., use of primary
energy resources, use of net freshwater), as well as output flows and waste categories (i.e.,
hazardous waste disposed, components for re-use) of a product. Environmental results in this
thesis focused only the environmental impacts as described above, as the expressed potential
impacts on the environment resulting from the product stage and EoL stage of WPC.

Material and methods 36

5 Publications and additional results

5.1 Peer-reviewed paper I

Title Substitution potentials of recycled HDPE and wood particles from post-
consumer packaging waste in wood-plastic composites

Authors Philipp F. Sommerhuber (CD 70%, EX 100%, ED, 70%)

Dr. Johannes Welling (CD 10%, EX 0%, ED 10%)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Krause (CD 20%, EX 0%, ED 20%)
Journal Waste Management
DOI DOI:10.1016/[Link].2015.09.011

CD… Conceptual Design

EX… Conducting experiments
ED… Editing

Publications and additional results 37

 Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Waste Management
journal homepage: [Link]/locate/wasman

Substitution potentials of recycled HDPE and wood particles

from post-consumer packaging waste in Wood–Plastic Composites
Philipp F. Sommerhuber a,⇑, Johannes Welling a, Andreas Krause b
a
Thünen Institute of Wood Research, Leuschnerstraße 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany
b
Institute of Mechanical Wood Technology, Department of Wood Sciences, University of Hamburg, Leuschnerstraße 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The market share of Wood–Plastic Composites (WPC) is small but expected to grow sharply in Europe.
Received 14 July 2015 This raises some concerns about suitable wood particles needed in the wood-based panels industry in
Revised 2 September 2015 Europe. Concerns are stimulated by the competition between the promotion of wooden products through
Accepted 7 September 2015
the European Bioeconomy Strategy and wood as an energy carrier through the Renewable Energy
Available online 12 September 2015
Directive. Cascade use of resources and valorisation of waste are potential strategies to overcome
resource scarcity. Under experimental design conditions, WPC made from post-consumer recycled wood
Keywords:
and plastic (HDPE) were compared to WPC made from virgin resources. Wood content in the polymer
Wood–Plastic-Composites
Cascade use
matrix was raised in two steps from 0% to 30% and 60%. Mechanical and physical properties and colour
Waste valorisation differences were characterized. The feasibility of using cascaded resources for WPC is discussed. Results
Mechanical properties indicate the technical and economic feasibility of using recycled HDPE from packaging waste for WPC.
Substitution Based on technical properties, 30% recycled wood content for WPC is feasible, but economic and political
Recycled resources barriers of efficient cascading of biomass need to be overcome.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction cling system appears to be considerable, as 50–70% of waste wood

is recovered directly as energy instead of being recycled for mate-
The European Bioeconomy strategy towards a sustainable rial utilization in products (Meinlschmidt et al., 2013).
growth has led to a considerable promotion of using wood and Wood–Plastic Composites (WPC) are finding more and more
wood-based products. Wood resources are facing a strong compe- acceptance due to their low moisture absorption, low density,
tition between material and energy utilization (European resistance to biological attack, good dimensional stability, and a
Commission, 2012; Pülzl et al., 2014). Wood prices have increased combination of high specific stiffness and strength (Valente et al.,
due to the high price for fossil energy, triggered by fossil fuel sub- 2011; Zimmermann and Zattera, 2013). WPC tend to be a good
stitution, which has negatively affected the profitability of the intermediate step in the cascade chain of biomass and are recy-
wood processing industry. Resource efficiency is a predominant clable (Migneault et al., 2014; Teuber et al., 2015). According to
topic for the future of the wood processing industry in Europe. In Eder (2013), WPC production and use are expected to increase fur-
addition to the Roadmap for a Resource Efficient Europe ther in Europe. This will result in increasing competition for wood
(European Commission, 2011), the term Circular Economy, which resources, which need to be affordable and which should be
aims at reducing both input of virgin materials and output of derived from sustainably maintained forests. In addition, plastics
wastes by closing economic and ecological loops of resource flows, derived from fossil-based hydrocarbon sources for WPC imply sig-
is on the rise (Haas et al., 2015). The cascading use of biomass, nificant environmental impacts.
which aims at recycling waste as a secondary resource prior to In this study, waste is defined as a material with no function,
energy recovery, is highlighted as a solution to prevent resource therefore co-products from sawmill are not defined as waste as
scarcity and price volatility (Höglmeier et al., 2013; Keegan et al., some studies have considered, i.e., Nourbakhsh et al. (2010),
2013; Höglmeier et al., 2014). The potential for a closed loop recy- Boeglin et al. (1997). Several studies have been published investi-
gating secondary resources for WPC. Studies focusing solely on
⇑ Corresponding author.
waste wood for WPC are, i.e.: Gozdecki et al. (2015), Krause et al.
(2013), Zimmermann and Zattera (2013), Chen et al. (2006),
E-mail addresses: [Link]@[Link] (P.F. Sommerhuber),
[Link]@[Link] (J. Welling), [Link]@[Link] Balasuriya et al. (2003). Migneault et al. (2014) investigated a
(A. Krause). HDPE-WPC matrix with 20–40% proportions of various virgin wood

[Link]
0956-053X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85 77

species and lignocellulose residues, pointing at wood and wood decking producers, the wood has to be derived from FSC/PEFC cer-
cellulose content as the crucial diminishing factor of WPC proper- tified virgin wood and A I post-consumer wood, which is classified
ties. Polyolefins (PE, PP) are known be well sortable from other as untreated natural wood according to the German Waste Wood
plastics (i.e., PET, PVC) in the recycling process to substitute virgin Act (German Government, 2003). Further explanation on waste
polyolefins in secondary products with good mechanical properties wood categories is presented in the Supplementary Information.
(Hu et al., 2013). A large number of studies have been published
focusing on recycled HDPE for WPC, i.e., Adhikary et al. (2008), 2.1.1. Post-consumer wood availability
Cui et al. (2010), Cui et al. (2008), Kazemi-Najafi et al. (2006), Post-consumer wood constitutes 6.3 Mio t/a in Germany.
Selke and Wichman (2004), Yam et al. (1990), stating WPC can Energy recovery of wood is the predominant end-of-life option
be successfully manufactured using recycled HDPE. In addition, (78%). The particleboard industry uses 20% post-consumer wood
WPC from bioplastics have been studied, but the currently high to substitute virgin particles. Disposal in landfills is almost negligi-
prices of bio-plastics prevent its further use (Kim, 2014). ble (Mantau et al., 2012) due to the ban of organic waste materials
The following studies investigated mechanical properties of in accordance to the European Waste Framework Directive
WPC made from both recycled wood and plastics. Kamdem et al. 2008/98/EC (European Commission, 2008).
(2004) compared mechanical properties of WPC made from About 1.3 Mio t/a (30%) of post-consumer wood are energeti-
chrome copper arsenate (CCA)-treated wood particles blended cally recycled in small-scale combustion plants. This amount
with virgin and recycled HDPE. Chaharmahali et al. (2008) studied includes waste wood A I and harvested timber products like parti-
the possibility of producing wood–plastic panels from medium cleboards without wood preservatives and PVC, categorized as A II,
density fibreboard (MDF) and particleboard (PB) with 60–80% according to the German Waste Wood Act (German Government,
wood content as filler with recycled HDPE from milk bottles using 2003). The contamination level of this material is low, which
a melt-blend/hot-press method. Shalbafan et al. (2013) demon- makes it suitable as a secondary resource in products. The largest
strated that flat pressed WPCs can be produced from residues of share of post-consumer wood (5 Mio t/a = 70%) can be classified
light-weight foam core particleboards which consisted of wood as A III, which is a mixture of untreated, treated and contaminated
particles (with cured urea–formaldehyde resin) and expanded waste wood. A separation into fractions of this amount for material
polystyrene (EPS). The wood flour content ranged from 75% to recycling (A I–A II) and energy recovery (A III–A IV) would presume
88%. The panels were produced by crushing the used foam core an intensified and cost-intensive separation process considering
particleboards and adding up to 2% coupling agent. the prohibition of diffusion of hazardous substances through recy-
A common conclusion among these studies was the similarity of cling activities as outlined in the German Waste Management and
the mechanical properties of WPC made from recycled resources Product Recycling Act (German Government, 2012) and the Euro-
compared to WPC made from virgin resources. Incorporation of pean Waste Directive 2008/98/EC (European Commission, 2008).
wood particles in the pure plastic matrix resulted in increasing Automated computerized sensor sorting based on detection pro-
density, flexural strength, flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity, cesses like near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), ion mobility spec-
water absorption, and decreasing impact strength and tensile trometry (IMS) and X-ray-fluorescence analysis are promising
strength. techniques for the cascading use of wood (Meinlschmidt et al.,
However, no previous research has been conducted on WPC in 2013), but are not used up to now in large scale post-consumer
the context of a growing and competing biomass demand and wood flows.
the political, technical, economic feasibility, and customer accep-
tance of using secondary resources for WPC from specific waste 2.1.2. Price situation of wood particles
streams. The first part of this article investigates market informa- The competition between material and energy utilization of
tion, availability, and price situation of secondary resources for wood has led to an increase of the market prices of waste wood
WPC. The focus is on waste wood and polyolefin plastics from a particles (Fig. 1).
specific waste category: post-consumer packaging. In the second Prices of waste wood of category A I increased 3% on average
part, laboratory manufactured WPC specimens made of post- per year from 2005 to 2015, and are tending to further increase
consumer recycled resources are characterized by mechanical
properties (flexural and tensile tests and impact strength), physical
properties (water absorption and density) and colour properties.
The geographical focus is Germany.

2. Market information, availability, and price situation of

resources for WPC

2.1. Wood particles

WPC production has increased and is projected to increase fur-

ther, in contrast to the overall decrease of wood-based panel con-
sumption in Europe according to FAOstat (FAO, 2015). Market data
on WPC is taken from Eder (2013) and Teuber et al. (2015). In
Europe, the increase of WPC production from the years 2010 to
2012 was 15%. Over the years 2012 to 2015, the production was
projected to grow by 26%. In Germany, about 53 k tonnes of wood
particles and fibres were used by WPC producers in the year 2012.
Wood particles used for WPC production constituted only 1% of Fig. 1. Price development of wood particles from co-products and post-consumer
wood in Germany in €/t. Particle size of post-consumer wood is <150 mm. Post-
wooden material consumed by the wood-based panels industry. consumer wood moisture content is 33%. Prices are based on absolute dry mass.
WPC outdoor deckings comprise the biggest share of the WPC mar- Sources: adapted from EUWID Recycling und Entsorgung (2005–2008) and EUWID
ket (67%). Due to self-committed quality standards of German WPC Holz und Holzwerkstoffe (2009–2015).
78 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85

slightly. Prices of waste wood from waste wood-panels (A II–A III) increases of the prices of wooden co-products and waste wood
increased 4% on average per year in the same period. Contaminated during the last ten years (2005–2015). Financial subventions
waste wood (A IV) increased 19% in the same period. The increase should be also discussed for material recycling of wooden particles,
in prices can be related to feed-in tariffs for thermal electricity pro- if the price of virgin wood particles were to increase steeply. These
duced from biomass based on the German Renewable Energy Act financial incentives may lead to economically feasible, dedicated
(German Government, 2014). Price changes of A II, A III and A IV waste wood recycling facilities with automated sorting techniques
have been very volatile, tending to decrease slightly. Market prices to sort efficiently commingled waste wood into specific categories
of lignocellulose virgin wood particles and fibres from round wood for material recovery (A I–A II) and for energy recovery (A III–A IV).
for WPC production with particle size <1 mm was about € 400/t in For category A II a great potential exists for cascading use in wood
2015 in Germany. Detailed information regarding the mean values products, such as WPC, in the national waste wood flow.
of price development per year, standard deviation, and conversion Currently, fluctuations in prices of wooden particles are likely to
factors are given in the Supplementary Information. be not as critical for the WPC-working industry as they are in the
conventional wood-based panel industry with more than 90%
2.2. Thermoplastic polyolefins for WPC wood particles proportion in the products, i.e., particleboard,
MDF. The price of specialized (0.1 mm) virgin wood particles is
The total crude oil use by 2012 was about 4.1 billion t of which about 400 €/t, 62 €/t (±5) for sawdust, 51 €/t (±7) for A I waste
5% (205 Mio t) were used globally by the plastic industries (Franke wood and 44 €/t (±6) for A II–III waste wood. It has to be stated,
et al., 2014). The yearly consumption of plastic converters in the regarding particle size, impurities, and low moisture content
EU-27 plus Norway and Switzerland is about 46 Mio t. Of that, (<7%), that specialized virgin wood particles are directly useable
10% (4.6 Mio t) are of recycled origin. About 60% are consumed for compounding with plastics to WPC, when compared to co-
by the packaging industry (18 Mio t) and the building & construc- products or waste wood. Drying effort from <7% to <1% moisture
tion industries (10 Mio t) (Villanueva and Eder, 2014). In 2011, content is low compared to moisture content of waste wood
Germany produced 10 Mio t of plastic granulates, of these 30% (15–33%). Other efforts and the related costs of waste wood valori-
were converted into packaging materials. sation such as sorting, grinding, drying, sieving to suitable particle
size for compounding to WPC are considerably higher compared to
2.2.1. Post-consumer plastics availability co-products.
About 1.5 Mio tonnes/year of packaging waste (HDPE, LDPE, PP, In addition, hazardous impurities of waste wood in waste wood
metals etc.) are disposed of separately and collected by Duales Sys- categories in which no hazardous impurities should be expected
tem licence partners. These activities are based on recovery rates in according to the German Waste Wood Directive (Riedel et al.,
accordance with the German Packaging Materials Ordinance 2014) lead to a potential diffusion of hazardous substances. Diffu-
(German Government, 1998). According to Franke et al. (2014), sion of hazardous substances through recycling activities is prohib-
the collection potential is 40–46% greater because households do ited by the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC.
not collect this amount separately due to consumer behaviour. In contrast, plastics and additives are more cost-intensive than
Up to now, about 0.5 Mio t of PE and 0.2 Mio t of PP are recycled wood particles in the WPC industry, which leads to strong depen-
to secondary resources by specialized plastic recycling facilities dency on hydrocarbon fossil price changes. Using recovered short-
each year. lived plastic packaging materials from fossil resources (i.e., PE, PP)
Interestingly, plastic packaging constitutes the largest plastics is feasible for WPC as legislative framework exists that regulates
market share, but plastic packaging materials are intended, in most compulsory recovery rates for plastic packaging waste (German
cases, to remain only briefly in the product life cycle when com- Government, 1998). This framework helped to establish an effi-
pared to building products. Haggar and Kamel (2011) mentioned cient recycling market for post-consumer lightweight packaging
40% of plastics are used for less than one month. Of these packag- materials. Recycled polyolefins granulates are available in suffi-
ing materials, thermoplastic polyolefins (LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE and cient quantity and quality to substitute virgin polyolefin in WPC.
PP) comprise the biggest share (Plastics Europe, 2015). In WPC pro- However, there is still a great potential to recover more post-
duction in Europe, thermoplastic polyolefin are the predominant consumer plastic waste in Germany as the compulsory recovery
plastic resources. In Germany, about 30 k t of PE and 44 k t of PP rate is rather low (22.5%) for material recycling of plastic. A com-
were used for WPC deckings production in the year 2012 (Eder, pulsory recovery rate for post-consumer wood packaging exists
2013). Compared to the yearly amount of recycled plastic granu- as well but is even lower (15%) compared to plastics, metals
lates, the thermoplastic polyolefins demand for WPC production (50%), glass, paper, and cardboard (60%). Increasing this rate for
could be completely satisfied by recycled granulates from post- post-consumer packaging wood and applying the rate on other
consumer packaging materials. post-consumer wood categories as well, i.e., furniture, would prob-
ably result in a more efficient cascading use of biomass. The trade-
2.2.2. Price situation of polyolefins granulates for WPC production off between substituting recycled wood in WPC and biomass as an
Recovered plastics prices are not determined by production important renewable energy carrier needs to be considered and
costs, as they would be in an efficient market. Instead, recovered should be investigated by, i.e., Life Cycle Assessment.
plastics prices are linked to the price of virgin plastics in the long
run. Virgin plastic prices are related to the crude oil price. The price
of recycled plastics (600–800 €/t for PE and PP) is 30–50% less than 3. Materials
the price of virgin plastics (1200 €/t) in the year 2015 in Germany.
Price range depends on the quality standards of the recycled plastic 3.1. Wood
granulates (Villanueva and Eder, 2014).
Waste wood was provided by Buhck Umweltservices GmbH &
2.3. Discussion on future development of economic and political Co. KG, a local recycling company in Hamburg, Germany, in Octo-
challenges of using cascaded resources for WPC ber 2014. The waste wood was stored without enclosures and was
chipped at the recycling site to a particle size of <200 mm. It was
In Germany, energy recovery from biomass is promoted by indi- predominantly composed of post-consumer transport pallets and
rect subventions (feed-in tariffs) which have led to considerable some post-consumer harvested timber products with a high soft
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85 79

wood content. The biggest proportion was identified as Norway metal frame size of 250
170
4 mm3 using a Siempelkamp com-
spruce followed by a small amount of Scots pine particles. The hard puterized hydraulic hot press. The temperature of the press plates
wood content consisted mostly of European beech. Some impuri- was set to 180 °C. First, the pressure was set to 20 bar for 370 s. The
ties like metals (nails) and plastics (polystyrene granulates, pack- upper plate was lifted shortly for 10 s to release water vapour from
aging materials) were identified by visual inspection at delivery wood particles of the compound. Then the pressure was increased
at the laboratory. The waste wood category was classified as A II to 60 bar for 117 s and to 100 bar for 22 s. Finally, the temperature
according to the German Waste Wood Directive (German of the plates was decreased to 90 °C for 169 s. The 100%-plastic-
Government, 2003). Kiln dried virgin Norway spruce was used plates were produced slightly different to the compounds to
for comparison purposes. decrease shrinkage. After final pressing at 100 bar, the temperature
of the plates was decreased to 60 °C instead of 90 °C with a slower
3.2. Plastics cool down below 120 °C.
The experimental design is presented in Table 1.
Recycled HDPE, called recythenÒ HDPE, was provided by INTER-
SEROH Dienstleistungs GmbH, Germany. It is a recycled material 4.4. Characterization
from a post-consumer recycling process. The raw material is based
on HDPE and may contain small amounts of other PE types. It can Three sheets (250
170
4 mm3) were produced for each
be used for injection moulding and extrusion. The melt flow index specimen group (A–F) by compression-moulding. Dumbbell-
(MFI) was 2 g/10 min according to DIN ISO 1133. Virgin HDPE was shaped specimens (170
10
4 mm3) were mill-cut from sheets
chosen based on the MFI properties of the recycled HDPE for com- with a rotary cutter for tensile testing. Rod-shaped specimens
parison. The virgin HDPE, called SABICÒ HDPE CC253, was provided (80
10
4 mm3) were sawn using a circular saw from sheets
by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC). The MFI was for all other tests. Specimens were conditioned and tested in
1.8 g/10 min according to DIN ISO 1133. 20 °C/65% relative humidity.
Mechanical characterization is presented in Table 2.
3.3. Additives A water absorption test was conducted according to DIN EN
15534-1. The water absorption of the compounds was calculated
Maleic anhydride polyethylene (MAPE), called Compoline by differential weighing of the specimens for each time period
CO/UL EP, was used as the coupling agent for the compounding (at Days 0, 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28) after total immersion into deminer-
process and was provided by Auserpolimer S.R.L., Italy. The MFI alized water at a temperature of 20 °C (±2). Water absorption was
was 2 g/10 min according to ISO 1133. calculated according to the formula:
Wt  W0
Water absorption ð%Þ ¼  100 ð1Þ
4. Methods W0
where Wt is the specimen weight after a given immersion in water
4.1. Grinding and W0 is oven dry mass of the specimen weight after constant
mass was reached (weight change <0.1% after 24 h).
The moisture content of waste wood was 33%, determined by Density of the specimens was calculated on the assumption that
the oven drying method (103 °C for 24 h) after delivery. Waste the water used for immersion has a density of 1 g/cm3 and was cal-
wood was manually sorted from nails before reducing the particle culated according to the formula:
size from <200 mm to <100 mm by a counter blade cutter.
The moisture content of the virgin wood particles was 9%, W0
Density ðg=cm3 Þ ¼ ð2Þ
determined by the oven-drying method (103 °C for 24 h). Virgin V0
spruce boards did not need to be sorted from impurities for cutting. where W0 is oven dry mass of the specimen weight and V0 is the
Waste and virgin wood chips were separately processed further to Volume of the specimen. Ten specimens were used for water
<1 mm mesh size in a Retsch laboratory grinder. absorption and density properties.

4.2. Compounding 4.5. Colour

Virgin and recycled HDPE and MAPE were obtained directly Differences in the colour of the specimens were compared using
usable for compounding. For that purpose, wood particles had to the CIElab colour method, which evaluates the dimension of light-
be oven-dried (103 °C for 72 h) to be able to blend with HDPE ness (L⁄) and dimension of colours (a⁄) and (b⁄). Values of L⁄ range
and MAPE. A laboratory internal mixer named HAAKE Reomix from black (0) to white (100). Values of a⁄ range from red (+50) to
3000 OS with tangential co-rotating twin-screw extruder geome- green (50). Values of b⁄ range from yellow (+50) to blue (50).
tries at 50 rotations per minute was used for compounding pro- Specimens were scanned using an Epson Expression 10000 Scanner
cesses for 15 min. Material was fed manually. The temperature and evaluated in Adobe Photoshop in the L ⁄ a ⁄ b⁄ colour spectrum.
for compounding was set to 170 °C. To enhance the compounding
of wood particles and HDPE, coupling agents are used in WPC man- Table 1
ufacturing. In this study, MAPE was used as the coupling agent. Experimental design: p indicates virgin content, r indicates recycled content.
Wood contains many hydroxyl groups for the esterification reac- Wood content 0% 30% 60%
tion with MAPE, which enhances the mechanical strength of WPC
Resources specimen A B C D E F
(Migneault et al., 2014). groups
pPE rPE pWPC rWPC pWPC rWPC
4.3. Compression moulding Waste wood A I-II – – – 29% – 58%
ALBA recythenÒ HDPE – 100% – 68% – 39%
The WPC mixtures were further processed in a Retsch grinding Virgin spruce – – 29% – 58% –
SABICÒ HDPE CC253 100% – 68% – 39% –
mill with a mesh size of 8 mm. The milled WPC-compounds and MAPE – – 3% 3% 3% 3%
pure HDPE (virgin and recycled granulates) were pressed in a
80 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85

Table 2
Mechanical characterization methods.

Characterization Standard Testing machine Method Crosshead Load cell Energy of Sample
speed (mm/min) (kN) pendulum (J) size
Flexural tests ISO 178 Zwick/Roell Universal 3-point bending 2 5 – 12
Tensile tests EN ISO 527-3 (Type 1 B) testing machine Makro-extensometer 10 (specimens A & B) 10 – 12
and 1 (C-F)
Charpy impact test ISO 179-1 (1eUb), Zwick/Roell HIT5.5P – – 1 12
un-notched

5. Results and discussion of experimental design

5.1. Physical properties

5.1.1. Density
Densities were almost equivalent in the specimen groups based
on the wood content level (A & B, C & D, E & F). Increase in density
of WPC was independent of whether virgin or recycled resources
were used. WPC densities were in the range of 1.05(±9E4)–1.17
(±2E3) g/cm3 and correlated well with literature (Klyosov,
2007; Migneault et al., 2014). The density of wood particles was
not investigated in detail but the density was almost equal for both
virgin and waste wood particles. Since the wood cell wall has a
density of approx. 1.4 g/cm3, no significant porosity is found in
the material. The density increased linearly in both pWPC and
rWPC, based on almost equal densities of pHDPE A 0.95(±1E3)
g/cm3 and rHDPE B 0.96(±1E3) g/cm3. It can be further assumed
that the contamination with inorganics, i.e. metals, sand, was very
low in the laboratory-recycled waste wood. Fig. 2. Water absorption.

5.1.2. Water absorption

As expected, water absorption was very low for pure plastic
immersed in water (pPE – A 0.07% and rPE – B 0.04% after
28 days). At 30% wood content, water absorption increased to
1.27% (pWPC – C) and 1.38% (rWPC – D) after 28 days. At 60% wood
content, recycled specimens (rWPC – F 6.12%) exhibited water
absorption compared to virgin specimens (pWPC – E 3.93%).
The increase of water absorption of rWPC and pWPC depending
on the wood content is well known. Since wood cell wall consists
of hydroscopic substances like carbohydrates and lignin it exhibits
a water uptake. The higher the wood proportion in the WPC
matrix, the more likely water will be absorbed. Butylina et al.
(2011) mentioned possible incomplete encapsulation of wood
fibres and probable occurrence of wood fibre aggregates in a PP-
matrix as additional influences on the water absorption properties
of WPC.
The water absorption is higher in the case of rWPC. This may be
linked to hydrophilic anionic surface-active agents (soaps) in addi-
tion to the previously mentioned decisive influences. Tensides are
used for washing sorted plastics waste in the recycling process of Fig. 3. Flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity.
HDPE granulates. These tensides reduced the surface tension of
water, which negatively affected the sorption behaviour of wood
particles. 2.77 GPa (pWPC – E) and 2.67 GPa (rWPC – F). Virgin and recycled
WPC projected continuous water absorption beyond 28 days, specimen exhibited very comparable results, but virgin materials
regardless of whether virgin or recycled resources were used were always a little higher. Since the wood modulus is higher than
(Fig. 2). the plastic modulus, the composite modulus increased with
increasing wood content. An increase of stiffness of the composites,
5.2. Mechanical properties by incorporating wood particles to the HDPE matrix was also
observed by, i.e. Migneault et al. (2014), Adhikary et al. (2008),
5.2.1. Modulus of elasticity Razi et al. (1997).
Fig. 3 presents the modulus of elasticity derived from flexural
(fMOE) and tensile (tMOE) tests. tMOE correlated well with fMOE 5.2.2. Tensile properties
in each specimen group. The 100% polymer matrix specimens con- Virgin and recycled HDPE showed comparably high elongation
stituted the lowest fMOE (A–0.99 GPa; B–0.91 GPa). By adding at Fmax. These values are much higher than measured on WPC spec-
wood to the polymer matrix, stiffness increased linearly to imens. With increasing wood content, the elongation was reduced
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85 81

to approx. 1% at 60% wood content. Virgin and recycled specimens

were not significantly different. Tensile strength decreased by add-
ing 30% wood content (pWPC – C 18.5 MPa and rWPC – D
15.7 MPa) with a slight increase by adding 60% wood content
(pWPC – E 21.6 MPa and rWPC – F 16 MPa). Fig. 4 presents tensile
strength on the left side and elongation at Fmax on the right.
The drop in tensile strength by the incorporation of wood in the
polymer matrix is a known disadvantage of WPC regardless
whether virgin or recycled HDPE is used, which was also reported
by Migneault et al. (2014). HDPE is a ductile material, as can be
seen in the elongation at Fmax of specimens A and B. Reinforcement
was not expected since the wood used was in the form of particles
and not fibres. The reduction in tensile strength was relatively low,
compared to the reduced amount of plastic in the cross section
showing that the wood particles were able to take some load from
the plastic independent of the origin of the wood.
A proposition to achieve better tensile properties of WPC could
be the incorporation of wood fibres to the polymer matrix, as
investigated by Butylina et al. (2011) in a PP-matrix. Using smaller Fig. 5. Flexural strength.
wood particles may lead to better tensile properties, as observed
by Razi et al. (1997). However, Migneault et al. (2014) stressed that
the correlations between aspect ratio of particles and the WPC particles were found during the visual inspection in the waste
were insignificant to the properties of tensile strength develop- wood, the possibility of immiscibility may have occurred in the
ment. Using wood particles of <1 mm (mesh size) seemed appro- compounding process of rWPC – F, which probably resulted in poor
priate for the experimental part, as WPC properties are mainly mechanical properties. Immiscibility of plastics is a common short-
affected by the wood proportion, applied process, and the additives coming of plastic recycling and is discussed by Kazemi-Najafi
(Migneault et al., 2014; Krause et al., 2013; Kumari et al. 2007). (2013) with relation to recycled plastics in WPC. The impurities
can lead to a less good envelopment of the single wood particles
resulting in a weaker composite as well.
5.2.3. Flexural strength The poor interfacial interaction can be traced back to the labo-
Flexural strength is presented in Fig. 5. The flexural strength ratory compounding and compression moulding processes as rhe-
increases with increasing wood content. Virgin materials showed ological flow ability decreases for HDPE with increasing wood
an increase from 25.4 MPa (pPE – A) to 33.6 MPa (pWPC – C) to particle proportions. This would prove that a full interfacial adhe-
42.6 MPa (pWPC – E), while recycled material exhibited a lower sion was not developed in the 60% rWPC – F composite, compared
increase. This could be due to higher tensile strength of the virgin to the 60% pWPC – E, as densities of E 1.17(±2E3) g/cm3 and F
composite. The wood exhibited a certain reinforcement effect in 1.16(±3E3) g/cm3 were slightly different. Scanning Electron
the flexural test. Compared to the reduced tensile strength it can Microscopy (SEM) pictures are presented in Fig. 6 and discussed
be assumed that compression strength is increased to a high in Section 5.3.
extent.
Flexural strength of 30% WPC made from recycled resources
showed similar strength compared to pWPC, but showed no fur- 5.2.4. Charpy impact strength
ther increase for 60% wood recycled material. Lower properties of All specimens were tested un-notched. The Charpy impact
rWPC with 60% waste wood content were measured for tensile strength of the pure HDPE specimens (A and B) could not be tested
strength as well. It is expected that this behaviour is due to impu- with a 1 J pendulum because no break occurred in either specimen.
rities in recycled plastics and recycled wood, which hindered a A and B were further tested with a 6 J pendulum and withstood the
proper interface formation between the two materials. As non- applied energy as well. The impact strength of pWPC specimens
HDPE plastic particles, i.e., small amounts of Polystyrene (PS) made of virgin content was higher than rWPC specimens in each
wood proportion group. Specimens made with 30% wood propor-
tion resulted in 8.4(±1.5) kJ/m2 (pWPC – C) and 7.6(±1.5) kJ/m2
(rWPC – D). Specimens made with 60% wood proportion resulted
in 8 ± 2.4 kJ/m2 (pWPC – E) and 5.4 ± 1.07 kJ/m2 (rWPC – F). The
same observation was made that the composites containing 30%
wood were almost equal, as the higher wood proportion led to
reduced impact strength for recycled material. The reasons for this
behaviour are the same as discussed for the other properties. Fore-
most, impact strength of WPC is affected by the wood proportion in
the matrix. Wood particles decreased the impact strength of the
polymer matrix, which is in accordance with previous studies
(Migneault et al., 2014; Kiaeifar et al., 2011).

5.3. Microstructure analysis

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was conducted for evalua-

tion of the wood and polymer matrix distribution in composite.
Specimens were prepared by cutting a 3–5
2 mm2 square from
Fig. 4. Tensile strength and elongation at Fmax. tested Charpy impact strength samples. The surface cross sections
82 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85

Fig. 6. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), left column 1 mm, right column 200 mm.

were investigated and are presented in Fig. 6. The tested samples no voids are visible. However, rWPC of 60% wood content showed
showed a close contact between wood cell wall and polymer wood particles with some gaps between wood and polymer, indi-
matrix for all composites. It can be seen on all images that nearly cating a weak interface. Polymer impregnation into wood lumens
all wood particles were filled with polymer or compressed so that differed from particle to particle, as can be seen when comparing
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85 83

Table 3 to now, the demand for wooden particles in German WPC produc-
Colour characterization. tion constitutes 1% of the wood demand of the wood working
Specimen L⁄ a⁄ b⁄ industry. However, with the promotion of the European Bioecon-
A pPE (0/100) 96 1 1 omy strategy, more wood products are coming to market increas-
ing the pressure on affordable resources and their availability.
Using recycled biomass as a substitution material is already imple-
mented in particleboards manufacted in Germany. In WPC manu-
B rPE (0/100) 48 2 1
facturing, smaller particle sizes are used (<1 mm). Inorganic
impurities are very likely to damage WPC processing techniques,
the moisture content of particles needs to be very low to be able
C pWPC (30/70) 45 4 14 to interface with plastics and additives. Treatment costs to achieve
these qualities from waste wood exceed the economic benefits of
the substitution potential of waste wood particles compared to
D rWPC (30/70) 39 1 5 co-products.
Successful substitutions of resources or materials need to con-
sider the functional equivalence in addition to economic and polit-
E pWPC (60/40) 37 2 13 ical considerations. In the experimental study, waste wood (A II)
and recycled HDPE from post-consumer packaging were com-
pounded in a laboratory mixer with MAPE, compression moulded
in a computerized hydraulic heated press and compared to WPC
F rWPC (60/40) 32 1 8
made from virgin Norway spruce particles and HDPE. This process-
ing method is not a common, practically applied method, but is
often used on the laboratory scale. Representativeness of results
would benefit by applying extrusion or injection moulding tech-
nique. The overall results showed that virgin and recycled
the pictures on the left (1 mm) with those on the right pictures resources were very comparable in many properties such as water
(200 lm). Fig. 6g) presents a good example that the wood particles uptake and mechanical properties. At high wood content (60%), the
were heterogeneously oriented in the matrix, which is due to the recycled material exhibited less good properties than virgin
low mould flow during compression moulding process. resources. This could be due to the impurities in recycled HDPE
and recycled wood. At lower wood content (30%), there were no
significant differences between recycled and virgin materials,
5.4. Colour characterization
showing a high substitution potential from a product-design point
of view. A difficulty could be the darker colour of the recycled
Results are presented in Table 3. Virgin HDPE granulates were
material (both plastic and wood) reducing the possibility to man-
delivered in white colour. Luminescence (L⁄ = 96) of the specimens
ufacture products in any colour.
pPE (A) was close to maximum (1 0 0) with colour hues close to
To conclude from the perspective of a potential WPC
zero (a⁄ = 1, b⁄ = 1). Recycled HDPE granulates were delivered
manufacturer:
in grey colour. Luminescence (L⁄ = 48) of the rPE (B) determined
the greyish look of rWPC specimens (D and F) which was also
 Economic feasibility of using recycled wood (A I – A II) in WPC is
related to the darker colour of recycled wood particles in compar-
questionable, due to small price difference vs. co-products up
ison to virgin wood particles. Virgin WPC specimens (C and E)
to now.
looked brownish with colour hues of a⁄ close to zero, and a bal-
 Using recycled HDPE granulates from post-consumer packaging
anced mix of red and green colours, with lower b⁄ values.
is economically feasible for WPC.
WPC deckings are available in a variety of colours ranging
 Inorganic residues in waste wood are likely to damage extrusion
reaching from dark–grey to wood-brown and brick-red by adding
and injection moulding WPC technology and need to be sorted
colour pigments. Colour perception is individual and based on
carefully from the waste wood.
the application, market trends, and geographical market entities.
 rWPC made of 30% recycled waste wood and 70% recycled HDPE
The addition of wood to plastic reduces the possible colours to
can be substituted for pWPC made of virgin resources, in appli-
some extent since light colours are difficult to realise. The use of
cations where stiffness is crucial.
more dark/grey recycled resources reduces this possibility further.
 Darker hues of WPC made from recycled resources would not
The WPC manufacturers need to offer a variety of different colours
influence customers’ preferences.
to the customer. This is probably a main difficulty for the use of
recycled material in WPC.
The following recommendations are proposed for a competing
Høibø and Nyrud (2010) concluded that surface homogeneity of
demand for biomass in terms of the European Bioeconomy strategy
wood products is the predominant visual aspect for customers.
by upscaling laboratory results on the national perspective of
Osburg et al. (2015) investigated customer acceptance of WPC
Germany:
among environmentally conscious customers. Customers preferred
eco-friendly materials (solid wood) over materials with greater
 Resource demand for polyolefin-WPC consumption can be com-
environmental impact (plastics). The more eco-friendly the cus-
pletely satisfied by recycled polyolefin and recycled wood.
tomer was, the stronger this preference became. WPC perception
 High level and variances of moisture content in waste wood (15–
was in the middle between solid wood and plastic materials.
33%) could be minimized by keeping waste wood enclosed
indoors or at least in canopied storages at the recycling site.
6. Conclusions  Increase and expand compulsory rates of both post-consumer
waste wood and plastics.
The European WPC market share is small but steadily increas-  Discuss financial incentives on political agendas to increase feasi-
ing, in contrast to the wood-based panels market in Germany. Up bility of waste wood recycling
84 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Waste Management 46 (2015) 76–85

 Environmental trade-off(s) between substituting secondary Gozdecki, C., Wilczyński, A., Kociszewski, M., Zajchowski, S., 2015. Properties of
wood–plastic composites made of milled particleboard and polypropylene. Holz
resources in WPC for using them as an energy carrier for fossil
Roh. Werkst. 73 (1), 87–95.
fuel substitution has to be further investigated. Haas, W., Krausmann, F., Wiedenhofer, D., Heinz, M., 2015. How circular is the
global economy?: An assessment of material flows, waste production, and
recycling in the European Union and the World in 2005. J. Ind. Ecol. (Early view),
1–13.
Haggar S.M. El and Kamel M.K., 2011. Wood Plastic Composites. In: Tesinova, P.
Acknowledgements (Ed.), Advances in Composite Materials – Analysis of Natural and Man-Made
Materials. InTech, pp. 325–344.
The research leading to these results was supported by the EU Höglmeier, K., Weber-Blaschke, G., Richter, K., 2013. Potentials for cascading of
recovered wood from building deconstruction: a case study for south-east
through the Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) action
Germany. Resour. Conservat. Recycl. 78, 81–91.
CASTLE, Grant agreement no. 316020. The contents of this publica- Höglmeier, K., Weber-Blaschke, G., Richter, K., 2014. Utilization of recovered wood
tion reflect only the author’s view and the European Union is not in cascades versus utilization of primary wood—a comparison with life cycle
assessment using system expansion. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 19 (10), 1755–
liable for any use that may be made of the information contained
1766.
therein. Philipp Sommerhuber wishes to thank INTERSEROH Dien- Høibø, O., Nyrud, A.Q., 2010. Consumer perception of wood surfaces: the
stleistungs GmbH for providing the recycled HDPE called relationship between stated preferences and visual homogeneity. J. Wood. Sci.
recythenÒHDPE. Being a licensed party of Duales System, INTER- 56 (4), 276–283.
Hu, B., Serranti, S., Fraunholcz, N., Di Maio, F., Bonifazi, G., 2013. Recycling-oriented
SEROH Dienstleistungs GmbH organizes the collection of post- characterization of polyolefin packaging waste. Waste Manage. 33 (3), 574–584.
consumer packaging waste in Germany. A considerable amount Kamdem, P., Jiang, H., Cui, W., Freed, J., Matuana, L.M., 2004. Properties of wood
of these post-consumer packaging materials are recycled by the plastic composites made of recycled HDPE and wood flour from CCA-treated
wood removed from service. Compos. Appl. Sci. Manuf. 35 (3), 347–355.
associate company ALBA Recycling GmbH. Kazemi-Najafi, S., Hamidinia, E., Tajvidi, M., 2006. Mechanical properties of
composites from sawdust and recycled plastics. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 100 (5),
3641–3645.
Appendix A. Supplementary material Kazemi-Najafi, S., 2013. Use of recycled plastics in wood plastic composites – a
review. Waste Manage. 33 (9), 1898–1905.
Keegan, D., Kretschmer, B., Elbersen, B., Panoutsou, C., 2013. Cascading use: a
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in systematic approach to biomass beyond the energy sector. Biofuels Bioprod.
the online version, at [Link] Bioref. 7 (2), 193–206.
Kiaeifar, A., Saffari, M., Kord, B., 2011. Comparative investigation on the mechanical
011. properties of wood plastic composites made of virgin and recycled plastics.
World Appl. Sci. J. 14 (5), 735–738.
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5.2 Peer-reviewed paper II

Title Wood-plastic composites as potential applications of recycled plastics of

electronic waste and recycled particleboard

Authors Philipp F. Sommerhuber (CD 80%, EX 10%, ED, 90%)

Tianyi Wang (CD 0%, EX 90%, ED 5%)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Krause (CD 20%, EX 0%, ED 5%)
Journal Journal of Cleaner Production
DOI 10.1016/[Link].2016.02.036

CD… Conceptual Design

EX… Conducting experiments
ED… Editing

Publications and additional results 48

 Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: [Link]/locate/jclepro

Woodeplastic composites as potential applications of recycled plastics

of electronic waste and recycled particleboard
Philipp F. Sommerhuber a, *, Tianyi Wang b, Andreas Krause b, 1
a
Thünen Institute of Wood Research, Leuschnerstraße 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany
b
Institute of Mechanical Wood Technology, Department of Wood Sciences, University of Hamburg, Leuschnerstraße 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Woodeplastic composites were injection-molded from recycled acrylonitrileebutadieneestyrene and
Received 20 October 2015 polystyrene from post-consumer electronics in the interest of resource efficiency and ecological product
Received in revised form design. The wood content was raised in two steps from 0% to 30% and 60%. Reinforcement performance
19 January 2016
of recycled particleboard was compared to virgin Norway spruce. Styrene maleic anhydride copolymer
Accepted 6 February 2016
Available online 13 February 2016
was used as the coupling agent in the composites with a 60% wood proportion to investigate the in-
fluence on interfacial adhesion. The composites were characterized by using physical and mechanical
standard testing methods. Results showed increased stiffness (flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity),
Keywords:
Woodeplastic composites
water uptake and density with the incorporation of wood particles to the plastic matrices. Interestingly,
WEEE strength (flexural and tensile) increased as well. Wood particles from Norway spruce exhibited rein-
Waste to resource forcement in terms of strength and stiffness. The same results were achieved with particleboard particles
Resource efficiency in terms of stiffness, but the strength of the composites was negatively affected. The coupling agent
Circular economy affected the strength properties beneficially, which was not observed for the stiffness of the composites.
Mechanical properties The presence of cadmium, chromium, copper, arsenic and lead in the recycled resources was found by an
elementary analysis. This can be linked to color pigments in recycled plastics and insufficient separation
processes of recycled wood particles for particleboard production.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The European Union (EU-25) generates about 8.9
106 t of

WEEE each year. Of that, 66% are domestically recovered within
Uncontrolled recycling activities of waste of electrical and the EU and 18% (1.8
106 t) are exported outside the EU. A
electronic equipment (WEEE) cause severe impacts to human significant amount of WEEE is therefore recycled under the
health and the environment. Open sky incineration, cyanide aforementioned undesirable conditions. In addition, valuable re-
leaching and simple smelters to recover precious metals as well as sources are lost through export e often illegal e accounting to a
landfilling the residues are common practices in underdeveloped, loss of 1.7
109 EUR/yr. within the EU (Huisman et al., 2015).
emerging, and some developed countries. The uncontrolled release Revenues from recycling WEEE-plastics constitute about 9% of
of toxic substances including heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic the total revenues resulting from WEEE recycling (Cucchiella
hydrocarbons (PHAs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and et al., 2015). Of these plastics, about 50% of the mass consist of
many other hazardous molecules through crude recycling methods, acrylonitrileebutadieneestyrene (ABS) and polystyrene (PS)
cause severe impacts at the local, regional and global levels (Kiddee (Ko€hnlechner, 2014; Premalatha et al., 2014; Zoeteman et al.,
et al., 2013; Premalatha et al., 2014). 2010).
It is estimated that 1.5
106 t of recycled ABS and PS from WEEE
will be available as secondary resources in the year 2019
(Ko€hnlechner, 2014), as the compulsory collection rate of the Eu-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ49 (0)40 73962 636. ropean Directive 2012/19/EU on WEEE (European Commission,
E-mail addresses: [Link]@[Link] (P.F. Sommerhuber), tianyi.
2012a) shall increase to 65%. In addition, Salhofer et al. (in press)
wang@[Link] (T. Wang), [Link]@[Link]
(A. Krause). stated that in future exports will be only possible in compliance
1
Tel.: þ49 (0)40 73962 623. with the European Waste Shipment Regulation. However, recycling

[Link]
0959-6526/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185 177

is only efficient and useful if a market exists for the recycled re- electron microscopy (SEM) evaluates the wood and polymer matrix
sources in accordance with the European Waste Framework distribution.
Directive 2008/98/EC (European Commission, 2008). It has to be stated that diffusion of hazardous substances
Woodeplastic composites (WPC) are on the increase in Europe through recycling activities is prohibited by the European Waste
(Carus et al., 2015). On the one hand, this will result in an increasing Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (European Commission, 2008).
demand for plastics derived from fossil-based hydrocarbon sources, Therefore, heavy metal content is investigated using elementary
which implies significant environmental impacts. On the other analysis to discuss potential applications.
hand, a competing demand also exists for wood resources, which
need to be affordable, and should be derived from sustainably 2. Materials
managed forests (Mantau et al., 2010). In terms of resource effi-
ciency (European Commission, 2011b) and circular economy (Haas 2.1. Wood
et al., 2015), WPC tend to be a good intermediate step in the cascade
chain of resources (Teuber et al., 2016). The particleboard was provided by Pfleiderer AG, Germany. Both
In this study it is hypothesized that recycled ABS and PS from sides of the 18 mm thick particleboard were coated with a mel-
WEEE and recycled particleboard offer a great technical potential to amine overlay. The glue content (urea-formaldehyde (UF)) was
apply the resource efficiency and circular approaches in innovative determined based on nitrogen content with an elemental analyzer
WPC products. (vario EL cube, Elementar). UF content was calculated to be 8.5%
The suitability of substituting recycled crystalline thermoplas- therefore reflects the average particleboard produced in Germany,
tics like the polyolefins in WPC have been intensively investigated, i.e., Diederichs (2014). Kiln-dried virgin Norway spruce was used
i.e., Yam et al. (1990), Kazemi-Najafi et al. (2009), Khanjanzadeh for comparison.
et al. (2012), Kazemi-Najafi (2013) and Sommerhuber et al. (2015).
However, research is limited concerning mechanical properties of
2.2. Plastics
WPC made from non-crystalline thermoplastics like ABS and PS
regardless the origin of resources.
Recycled ABS and PS originating from WEEE, called WEplast,
Kuo et al. (2009) showed that the tensile strength and flexural
were provided by wersag GmBH & Co. KG, Germany. The specific
strength of virgin content ABS-WPC with 3% maleic anhydride
monomer ratio of ABS was not known. Known properties according
polypropylene were lower than the pure ABS and specific tensile
to the datasheets of the used recycled PS and ABS are presented in
modulus was 40% lower. Chotirat et al. (2007) demonstrated that as
Table 1.
the wood content was increased to a proportion of 33% in a virgin
ABS matrix, the flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity (MOE)
increased 50% and 63%, respectively, with decreasing flexural, 2.3. Additives
tensile and impact strength. Yeh et al. (2009) compared mechanical
properties of WPC made from virgin and recycled post-consumer Styrene maleic anhydride copolymer (SMA), called SMA 3000 P,
ABS from unknown sources. The authors stressed that the recy- was produced by Cray Valley, France and provided by Gustav
cled ABS contained various impurities, and had poor and variable Grolman GmbH & Co. KG, Germany. SMA was used as a coupling
mechanical properties when compared to virgin ABS. However, agent to investigate its suitability in recycled ABS and PS-WPC
mechanical properties were mostly affected by the wood content. matrices containing a 60% proportion of wood. The SMA had a
At a 50% proportion of wood flour, mechanical properties remained molar ratio of styrene/maleic anhydride close to 3/1. The resin was
unchanged when the virgin ABS in the matrix is replaced by provided in powder form.
recycled ABS. Tensile modulus of the recycled ABS-WPC with 50% The experimental design is presented in Table 2.
wood flour and 10% styrene maleic anhydride (SMA) was 12%
higher than without SMA. 3. Methods
Pracella et al. (2010) investigated virgin PS with cellulose and
oat content. PS-WPC was brittle in performance, MOE increased 3.1. Composite preparation
32% by adding 40% cellulose and 2.5% PS-co-MA, while tensile
strength and elongation at break decreased. Increasing the SMA to Particleboard and Norway spruce were chipped with a counter
5% lowered the increase in MOE to 12%. Wang et al. (2005) inves- blade cutter (BENZ TRONIC PLUS 3000) to a size of 20
5
5 mm3.
tigated the influence of the process factors on the physical prop- The moisture content of the virgin wood particles was 9%, deter-
erties of WPC panels made from three recycled-plastic packaging mined by the oven-drying method (103  C/24 h). As both wood
materials (PE, PP, and PS). The PS-WPC showed superior properties sources were stored indoors in same relative humidity over a
to PE and PP. The flexural strength was superior to pure PS. With an period of >1 month, comparable moisture content for particleboard
increasing of wood flour content from 30% to 50%, the specific can be assumed. Particleboard and virgin wood chips were further
modulus increased by 57%. Similar results were found in the study processed separately in a laboratory grinder (Retsch SM 2000) to
from Lisperguer et al. (2010). Lisperguer et al. (2007) studied the <1 mm mesh size. The morphology can best be described as par-
effect of wood acetylation on thermal behavior of PS-WPC and ticles. The specific morphology of particles was not determined
stated that acetylated wood flour produces WPC with better ther- further.
mal stability than non-acetylated wood flour. PS and ABS were delivered sorted as colored ‘shredder material’
Chaharmahali et al. (2008) incorporated recycled particleboard with an average particle size of 6e8 mm. The plastic particles were
in a HDPE matrix stating that mechanical properties are compa- separately extruded in a Leistritz ZSE27iMAXX-400 co-rotating,
rable to virgin wood particles HDPE-matrix. Likewise, Gozdecki intermeshing, twin-screw extruder for homogenization purposes.
et al. (2015) concluded the same behavior in a PP-matrix. The process temperature was set to 180  C for PS and 200  C for
These short reviews support continuing research in WPC made ABS. The screw speed for both materials was 80 rpm. The pressure
from recycled resources. Therefore, mechanical performance of was 53 bar (PS) and 60 bar (ABS). The extruded plastics were
WPC made from recovered PS and ABS from post-consumer WEEE directly cut to lenses of 5 mm in diameter using a Hot Face
with recycled particleboard are investigated. In addition, scanning Pelletizer (Leistritz), and air-cooled afterwards.
178 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185

Table 1
Properties of recycled PS and ABS according to datasheets of WEplast. Mechanical behavior adapted from Chanda and Roy (2007).

Properties Standard Unit WEplast PS WEplast ABS

Mechanical behavior e e Brittle Tough, hard, rigid

MFI DIN EN ISO 1133 g/10 min 7 25
MOE DIN EN ISO 527-1 GPa 2.2 2.5
Tensile strength DIN EN ISO 527-1 MPa 31 48
Charpy impact strength un-notched ISO 179-1 eU kJ/m2 20 11
Moisture content e % 0.1 1
Specific content e % 98 98.5
Impurities e e Wood (0e0.1%)
Rubber (0e0.2%)
Flame retardants (0e0.1%)
PVC (0e0.1%)
PS, PPO (0.5e1.5%)

Table 2
Experimental design.

Sample code Plastics Wood Additive

SMA (%)
PS (%) ABS (%) Norway spruce (%) Particle-board (%)

A Ps 100 e e e e
B Abs e 100 e e e

C Ps/W30 70 e 30 e e
D Ps/W60 40 e 60 e e
E Ps/W60/S 39 e 58 e 3

F Ps/Pb30 70 e e 30 e
G Ps/Pb60 40 e e 60 e
H Ps/Pb60/S 39 e e 58 3

I Abs/W30 e 70 30 e e
J Abs/W60 e 40 60 e e
K Abs/W60/S e 39 58 e 3

L Abs/Pb30 e 70 e 30 e
M Abs/Pb60 e 40 e 60 e
N Abs/Pb60/S e 39 e 58 3

Wood particles were dried at 103  C for 24 h to reach a moisture After extrusion-compounding, extruded PS and ABS lenses and
content of <1% to be able to interface with polymers and the coupling WPC granulates were injection-molded into mechanical test
agent. WPC granulates were extruded in a Leistritz ZSE27iMAXX-40D specimens using an ARBURG Allrounder 420C Golden Edition
co-rotating, intermeshing, twin-screw extruder. Table 3 presents injection-molding machine. Although the nozzle temperature was
processing parameters. The WPC mixture was cut directly into gran- in some cases >200  C, lower mass temperature can be expected as
ulates using a Hot Face Pelletizer (Leistritz), and air-cooled afterwards. degradation of wood was not observed.

Table 3
Extrusion compounding and injection molding parameters.

Sample Mass temp. ( C) Extrusion compounding Injection molding

Mass flow (kg) Rotation speed (1/min) Pressure (bar) Nozzle temp. ( C) Dosing time (s)

A Ps 134 3 80 53 215 13.36

B Abs 171 6 80 60 215 12.88

C Ps/W30 133 3 80 58 195 16.16

D Ps/W60 147 4 80 86 206 8.63
E Ps/W60/S 152 4 80 104 206 9.61

F Ps/Pb30 144 4 80 51 195 14.83

G Ps/Pb60 151 4 80 79 205 16.36
H Ps/Pb60/S 152 5 100 97 205 17.43

I Abs/W30 160 4 110 50 195 13.39

J Abs/W60 170 4 110 80 205 18.44
K Abs/W60/S 162 4 110 77 205 17.13

L Abs/Pb30 158 3 110 50 195 14.06

M Abs/Pb60 171 3 110 65 200 24.10
N Abs/Pb60/S 173 3 110 70 200 25.94
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185 179

3.2. Composite characterization Table 4

Density.

Dumbbell-shaped specimens (170
10
4 mm3) were used for Sample Density Change in density to plastic matrix
tensile testing. Rod-shaped specimens (80
10
4 mm3) were used MV (g/cm3) SD (g/cm3) D g/cm3 D%
for all other tests. For each test, 10 specimens were conditioned and
A Ps 1.043 0.001 e e
tested in 20  C/65% relative humidity. Flexural and tensile tests were
B Abs 1.054 0.002 e e
conducted using a Zwick Roell Universal testing machine. Flexural
test was conducted according to DIN EN ISO 178 (DIN EN ISO, 2003). C Ps/W30 1.136 0.002 0.204 þ9
The properties were measured in a three-point bending test at a D Ps/W60 1.247 0.001 0.202 þ20
crosshead speed of 5 mm/min and a load frame with 5 kN load cell. E Ps/W60/S 1.245 0.002 0.105 þ19
Tensile test was conducted in accordance to DIN EN ISO 527-3 using
F Ps/Pb30 1.143 0.001 0.214 þ10
type 1A specimens (DIN EN ISO, 1996). The properties were
G Ps/Pb60 1.242 0.003 0.210 þ19
measured using a makroextensometer. The crosshead speed was H Ps/Pb60/S 1.241 0.002 0.110 þ19
1 mm/min and a load frame of 5 kN load cell was used.
A water absorption test was conducted according to DIN EN I Abs/W30 1.148 0.002 0.007 þ9
15534-1 (DIN EN, 2014). The water absorption of the compounds J Abs/W60 1.257 0.003 0.106 þ19
K Abs/W60/S 1.253 0.003 0.105 þ19
was calculated by differential weighing of the specimens for each
time period (at days 0, 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28) after total immersion into
L Abs/Pb30 1.149 0.002 0.013 þ9
demineralized water at a temperature of 20  C (±2). Water ab- M Abs/Pb60 1.251 0.005 0.115 þ19
sorption was calculated according to the formula: N Abs/Pb60/S 1.237 0.009 0.101 þ17

Wt  W0
Water absorption ð%Þ ¼ *100 (1)
W0

where Wt is the specimen weight after a given immersion in water recycled PS (A e 1.043 g/cm3). ABS product range is heterogeneous
and W0 is oven dry mass of the specimen weight after constant due to various possibilities of molecule ratios because ABS consists
mass was reached (weight change < 0.1% after 24 h). of three different monomers: acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene.
Density of the specimens was calculated according to Archi- For instance, Kuo et al. (2009) reported 1.02 g/cm3 of virgin ABS.
medes' principle based on the assumption that the water used for Higher density of ABS up to 1.2 g/cm3 is also possible, which results
immersion has a density of 1 g/cm3 and was calculated according to in great variability of post-consumer ABS.
the formula: The density of wood particles was not investigated in detail.
Wood particles were very likely to be further reduced and squeezed
 .  W
during the compounding process. This resulted in wood cell walls
Density g cm3 ¼ 0 (2)
V0 which have a density of approximately 1.4 g/cm3 (Migneault et al.,
2014). A detailed description will be presented in Section 4.3. The
where W0 is oven dry mass of the specimen weight and V0 is the addition of wood content in the polymer matrix resulted in an
Volume of the specimen. Ten specimens were used for water ab- almost linear increase in density up to 20% (1.245 g/cm3) in PS-WPC
sorption and density properties. (E) and 19% (1.251 g/cm3) in ABS-WPC (M), regardless of whether
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was conducted to investi- Norway spruce or recycled particleboard were used. However,
gate morphology characteristics of WPC specimens and to evaluate specimens made from particleboard exhibited slightly higher
the wood and polymer matrix distribution. Specimens for SEM densities than specimens made from spruce. This can be linked to
were prepared by cutting a square of 3e5
2 mm2 from tested possible impurities (small pieces of silica or metals) as German
flexural strength samples. Vapor coating of the samples were done particleboards are produced with <30% recycled wood content.
in a BioRAD SC 510 SEM Coating System. The surface microstructure Density was not significantly affected by incorporation of 3%
was analyzed in a Quanta FEG Type 250. SMA in all PS-WPC and Norway spruce ABS-WPC.
According to published work of, i.e., Schlummer et al. (2007),
heavy metal content in recycled WEEE was expected. The ICP-OES
4.1.2. Water absorption
(Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry)
Fig. 1 presents water absorption. Water absorption was very low
method was used to analyze the elements: silver (Ag), arsenic (As),
for recycled PS (A e 0.2%) and ABS (B e 0.7%) after 28 days. After 28
bismuth (Bi), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper
days, the 30%-wood proportion WPC (C, F, I, L) exhibited about 4%
(Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and thallium (Tl) in recycled ABS, PS and
water absorption. In the 60%-wood proportion WPC, Norway
Norway spruce and recycled particleboard. The samples were
spruce (D) resulted in the highest water absorption in the PS-
separately ground and dissolved in Aqua regia with multi-element
matrix (16%) and in the ABS-matrix (12%) after 28 days.
standard solution IV Certipur to determine the previously
The increase of water absorption by incorporation of wood
mentioned elements. The analysis was conducted with an induc-
particles to the plastic matrix is well known, i.e., Gozdecki et al.
tively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy iCAP 6300 duo
(2015). A wood cell wall consists of hydroscopic substances, like
ICP/OES.
carbohydrates and lignin, which leads to water uptake. The higher
the wood proportion in the WPC matrix, the more water will be
4. Results and discussion absorbed. Since particleboard contained 8.5% UF, the hydroscopic
content is slightly reduced, which resulted in lower water absorp-
4.1. Physical properties tion of particleboard-WPC. UF is only soluble in acid and alkaline
solutions and boiling water.
4.1.1. Density The introduction of SMA to the 60%-WPC-matrix was beneficial
Densities of specimens are presented in Table 4. The density of in both PS and ABS specimens after 28 days, which could be linked
recycled ABS was higher (B e 1.054 g/cm3) than the density of to increased interfacial adhesion with wood particles. Except
180 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185

Fig. 1. Water absorption of a) PS-WPC and b) ABS-WPC.

specimens of group G (60% particleboard in PS-matrix) showed

very similar water absorption after 28 days. All other WPC speci-
mens projected continuous water absorption beyond 28 days, Fig. 2. Modulus of elasticity of a) PS-WPC and b) ABS-WPC.
regardless of whether Norway spruce or recycled particleboards
were used.
the results were comparable with, i.e., Migneault et al. (2014) and
Adhikary et al. (2008).
4.2. Mechanical properties

4.2.1. Modulus of elasticity 4.2.2. Tensile properties

Fig. 2 presents the modulus of elasticity derived from tensile Fig. 3 presents tensile strength on the left side and elongation at
(tMOE) and flexural (fMOE) tests. tMOE correlated well with fMOE Fmax on the right side of the plots. Pure PS (A e 12.4% ± 6) showed
in each specimen group. The 100% polymer matrix specimens superior elongation at Fmax when compared to ABS (B e 4.2% ± 2).
constituted the lowest fMOE (A e 2.1 GPa; B e 2.4 GPa). The With increasing wood content, the elongation was reduced to
incorporation of wood in PS increased the stiffness linearly to approx. 0.5% at 60%-wood content regardless of whether Norway
7.7 GPa (D) and 7.3 GPa (G). Since the wood modulus is higher than spruce or recycled particleboard were used. The introduction of
the plastic modulus, the modulus of WPC increased with increasing wood significantly reduced the ductility of the polymers as wood
wood content. Hence, the incorporation of wood in ABS increased has a low ductility which resulted in poor elongation at Fmax
the stiffness linearly as well to 8.3 GPa (J) and 7.9 GPa (M). properties.
Chotirat et al. (2007) achieved lower fMOE (3.1 GPa) and tMOE The introduction of 3% SMA in 60%-wood WPC resulted in values
(1.5 GPa) by using injection-molded virgin ABS and 33.3% sawdust. between the results of elongation at Fmax of 30% and 60%-wood
Comparing fMOE and tMOE properties of PS and ABS-WPC to WPC with an average value of 0.7%. In contrast, SMA significantly
polyolefins-WPC, i.e., HDPE, PS and ABS-WPC resulted in superior improved tensile strength properties in both PS-WPC (E e
results. Sommerhuber et al. (2015) reported a MOE of 2.7 GPa for 29.4 MPa; H e 24.8 MPa) and ABS-WPC (K e 48.9 MPa; N e
flat-pressed WPC made from recycled HDPE and 60% recycled 43.5 MPa), which is in good accordance with the literature. Yeh
waste wood. The authors stressed that the results might be better if et al. (2009) stated that the increase in strength with added SMA
extrusion/injection-molding techniques were to be used. However, is due to the improved adhesion between wood and polymer. This
 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185 181

Fig. 3. Tensile strength and elongation at Fmax of a) PS-WPC and b) ABS-WPC.

resulted from the reaction between maleic anhydride in SMA and

the hydroxyl groups on the surface of cellulose.
In contrast to elongation at Fmax, the origin of wood significantly Fig. 4. Flexural strength of a) PS-WPC and b) ABS-WPC.
influenced tensile strength. Pure ABS (B e 35.5 MPa) exhibited
higher tensile strength than pure PS (A e 18.2 MPa). Incorporation
of Norway spruce resulted in superior tensile strength compared to particleboard correlated well with tensile strength as
particleboard. The introduction of Norway spruce linearly increased particleboard-PS exhibited higher flexural strength at 30% wood
tensile strength in PS to 24.4 MPa (D) and in ABS to 43.8 MPa (J). The content which decreased by increasing particleboard content to
introduction of particleboard increased tensile strength in PS to 60% (45.6 MPa). Using Norway spruce resulted in linearly increasing
21.4 MPa (G) and in ABS to 37 MPa (M). Interestingly, a drop in flexural strength to 58.3 MPa (E e Ps/W60) and 85.7 MPa (K e Abs/
tensile strength through the incorporation of wood was reported by W60).
Chotirat et al. (2007), but in our study Norway spruce and parti- The introduction of SMA benefited the flexural strength for both
cleboard exhibited reinforcement properties. Both wood resources Norway spruce and particleboard-WPC. Therefore, SMA signifi-
were able to take more tensile load in the matrix than the pure cantly improved tensile and flexural strength properties of recycled
plastics. PS and ABS-WPC regardless of the wood origin, which can be linked
to improvement of interfacial adhesion between wood particles
4.2.3. Flexural strength and plastic matrix and is in good agreement with the literature,
The neat plastic specimens showed ductile performance at 3.5% based on virgin ABS-WPC (Yeh et al., 2009). Therefore, it was likely
standard elongation criterion, as no specimens did break. This that the interfacial bonding in the particleboard PS-WPC without
resulted in flexural stress of 39.8 MPa ± 0.2 (A e Ps) and SMA was not sufficient as was the case in the particleboard ABS-
65.5 MPa ± 0.3 (B e Abs) at 3.5% elongation. WPC. SEM pictures are presented in Figs. 5 and 6 and discussed
Fig. 4 presents flexural strength properties of WPC specimens. in Section 4.3.
The increase of wood content in the plastic-matrices increased the Further, weaker strength results of particleboard-WPC could be
flexural strength in both PS-WPC and ABS-WPC. The introduction of linked to the presence of UF (8.5%) which hindered the interfacial
30% wood resulted in the lowest flexural strength at Fmax in both adhesion between UF-afflicted particles and plastic matrix. In
PS-WPC (C e 44.2 MPa; F e 47.5 MPa) and ABS-WPC (I e 69.4 MPa; contrast, Gozdecki et al. (2015) reported better flexural and tensile
L e 64.4 MPa). Flexural strength performance by incorporation of strength in a comparison study of particleboard-WPC and virgin
182 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185

Fig. 5. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of PS-WPC.

Fig. 6. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of ABS-WPC.

 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185 183

wood particles-WPC in a PP matrix. In their study, different ge- from lead tetra oxide rustproof primer pigments for, i.e., nails in
ometries of wood (flour, particles) were used where virgin wood solid wood products, but its use has been restricted since 2005 in
particles exhibited much higher length-to-thickness properties Germany.
than recycled particles from particleboard. The authors linked the In Germany, recycling of waste wood as secondary material or
presence of UF in particleboard particles to the almost equal me- fuel is regulated by the German Waste Wood Directive (German
chanical properties of WPC made from virgin wood particles. Government, 2003). Waste wood is categorized into four cate-
gories (A I, A II, A III and A IV) as can be seen in Table 6. Only waste
4.3. Microstructure analysis wood categories A I and A II are permitted to be recycled in parti-
cleboards. Biocide-treated wood is classified as A IV and therefore
Figs. 5 and 6 present surface cross sections of the Norway spruce not suitable as a secondary material in wood products. However,
reinforced composites on the left side and particleboard reinforced Riedel et al. (2014) reported increased Cr and Pb content in waste
composites on the right side with a 60% wood proportion. The wood categories, in which no hazardous impurities should be ex-
samples exhibited a close contact between polymer matrix and pected (A I and A II). Diffusion of hazardous substances through
wood particles without SMA in (samples D, G, J, M) with a slightly recycling activities is prohibited by the German Waste Manage-
better interfacial bonding of wood particles and plastic matrix with ment and Product Recycling Act (German Government, 2012) and
SMA (E, H, K, N). Microstructural voids were visible in all speci- the European Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (European
mens, whereas the structure of wood lumens seemed to be better Commission, 2008).
maintained in Norway spruce composites (D, E, J, K) than in parti- Therefore, it can be assumed that the separation processes of
cleboard composites (G, H, M, N). recycled wood particles for particleboard production were not
Particleboard reinforced PS-WPCs showed weaker physical and sufficient to separate the waste wood into a non-contaminated
mechanical performance compared to all other WPC specimens. fraction for material recovery (A I and A II) and a contaminated
ABS is non-polar and polar in structure and therefore relatively energy recycling fraction (A III and A IV). The multiple accounting of
hydrophilic in structure, which tends to wet the wood surface EWC categories (European Waste Catalogue) to different waste
(Chotirat et al., 2007; Yeh et al., 2009). This resulted in good categories of A I, A II and A III seems to be a possible explanation for
interfacial bonding and was likely to lead to better physical and the diffusion of contamination in waste wood categories.
mechanical performance compared to PS composites, regardless of
the origin of the wood content. According to the datasheets of 4.4.1. Application considerations
WEplast, ABS showed a higher MFI of 25 compared to PS of 7, which The level of elements is very likely to change over time as the
influenced rheological behavior of the WPC matrix in extrusion and composition of products and the regulation of substances will
injection molding processes. change over time. Schlummer et al. (2007) compared the results of
an elementary analysis of recycled plastics from WEEE to previ-
4.4. Elementary analysis ously released studies, which had been published more than eight
years prior to their publication. The authors reported lower levels of
It was assumed that recycled ABS and PS from WEEE contained Ca, Pb, Cr, and Ni in housing shredder material by factors 2e7 and
residues of hazardous substances from, i.e., flame-retardants and lower levels of Sb, As, Cr, Ni in residues of shredder material by
heavy metals among other substances, according to the works of, factors 4e30. This can be linked to changing standards and opti-
i.e., Schlummer et al. (2007), Oguchi et al. (2013) and Dimitrakakis mization of separation technologies. However, the authors
et al. (2009). Results in Table 5 reflect the pure PS, ABS, Norway concluded that the main drawback of recycling WEEE polymer
spruce and particleboard without compounding to WPC. fractions is the presence of PBDD/F (polybrominated dibenzo-
High concentrations of Cd were found in the recycled ABS, dioxins and dibenzofurans), PBDE (diphenyl ethers) and Cd at levels
which can be linked to Cd-containing color pigments (Fink et al., close to or above legislative thresholds. PBDE can be linked to
2000; Schlummer et al., 2007). The higher contents of Cr flame-retardants, which were not specifically investigated in this
(þ3.35 ppm), Cu (þ2.3 ppm) and Pb (þ9.8 ppm) in recycled parti- study, but can be expected according to the datasheets of WEplast
cleboard particles compared to Norway spruce were likely to be PS and ABS (0e1% proportion of flame-retardants in recycled PS
derived from recycled content in particleboard. As was only found and ABS).
in the recycled resources. Water-borne preservatives based on In respect to potential applications of WPC from these second-
copper, including in part chrome or arsenic, was commonly used as ary resources, threshold values of hazardous substances need to be
fungicide for outdoor applications of wood products. Today, the use considered according to DIN EN 71-3 (DIN EN, 2002). The standard
in Europe is strongly regulated (European Commission, 2012b). is used for products made of particleboard, which are used in do-
Some preservatives, such as copper chrome arsenic (CCA), are not mestic applications and in close contact to humans. The standard
applied anymore in Germany and Europe. Pb is likely to be derived can be analogously used for WPC products in comparable appli-
cations, i.e., outdoor deckings. In the case of closed-loop recycling e
recycled plastics are used in the same product category e threshold
Table 5 values of the RoHS Directive (European Commission, 2011a) need to
Elementary analysis. LOD e limit of detection. Values in ppm.
be considered.
Element rPS rABS Norway spruce Particleboard In both cases, threshold values were not exceeded. However, the
Ag <LOD <LOD 0.03 <LOD recycled samples were not contamination-free, which could be
As 0.20 0.30 <LOD 0.21 minimized by improvements in sorting techniques and an accurate
Bi <LOD <LOD <LOD <LOD allocation of waste wood into waste wood categories.
Cd 10.65 58.99 0.30 0.26
In terms of steady secondary resource availability (quantity),
Co 6.88 10.84 0.07 0.26
Cr 4.53 7.05 0.21 3.57 recycled ABS and PS from WEEE as well as post-consumer parti-
Cu 11.69 19.07 0.93 3.24 cleboards can be considered as sufficient to substitute primary
Ni 5.74 10.92 0.24 0.95 materials in WPC production. However, the great heterogeneity of
Pb 8.45 4.13 0.75 10.54 monomer ratios in ABS needs to be carefully discussed (quality),
Ti <LOD <LOD <LOD <LOD
which impacts the thermal degradability of wood. At temperatures
184 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 121 (2016) 176e185

Table 6
Methods for waste wood recycling.

Waste wood EWC Examples Permissible recovery option according Possible contaminations
category to German Government (2003)

Secondary Secondary
material fuel

AI 03 01 05 Natural wood from shavings and packaging, ✓ ✓ Metals, lacquer, primer, plastics
15 01 03 cable drums after 1989
17 02 01
20 01 38
A II 03 01 05 Furniture, veneer residues without PVC, derived ✓ ✓ Metals, pigments, concrete, sand,
17 02 01 timber products without harmful PVC veneered particleboards
20 01 38 contaminations, particleboards
A III 17 02 01 Furniture containing halogenated organic (✓) ✓ Metals, PVC etc.
20 01 38 compounds
20 03 07
A IV 15 11 0* Waste wood with treated wood preservatives e ✓
17 02 04* (i.e., railway sleepers, telephone masts)
17 06 03*
19 12 06*

between 100  C and 200  C, heating of wood produces emissions of Elementary analysis was conducted to investigate the content of
water vapor, carbon dioxide and traces of organic compounds heavy metals in the recycled resources:
during processing. Above 200  C, significant thermal degradation
occurs, with major mass loss beyond 250  C (Borrega and  recycled ABS exhibited high Cd content (59 ppm) which can be
Ka€renlampi, 2008). For ABS, the processing temperature of extru- linked to color pigments in WEEE-plastics
sion and injection molding machinery may vary between 180 and  particleboard showed higher contents of Cr (þ3.35 ppm), Cu
260  C, depending on the specific molecule ratio of the polymer. (þ2.3 ppm) and Pb (9.8 ppm) compared to Norway spruce
The processing temperature for PS may vary between 160 and which is very likely to be derived from previous recycling pro-
230  C. In our study, it was possible to keep the extrusion- cesses of particleboards production,
compounding temperature below the degradation point of wood  The heavy metal element As was only found in the recycled
to produce WPC. resources
Results of elementary analysis were limited in terms of sampling
and sample size, as only a very small amount (50 kg) of the annually Finally the question has to be asked if it is technically feasible to
recovered WEEE was used in our study at a specific time. Therefore, produce WPC from secondary resources is it feasible in terms of
continuous sampling should be applied over a long period, if environmental considerations as well? Material complexity of
recovered plastics from WEEE and particleboard are considered for products tends to be getting higher, which results in the need for
WPC applications. However, the first results showed satisfying re- more sophisticated waste management systems, policies and
sults using plastics from properly collected WEEE and its recycled treatment technologies. Using secondary resources as input mate-
resources. rial from open-loop recycling to substitute primary material may
on the one hand be environmentally preferable, but producing
materials where only closed-loop recycling is feasible with given
5. Conclusions state-of-the-art technologies or diffusion of hazardous substances
is likely to occur, does not support the precautionary principle of
WPC specimens made of recycled WEEE-plastics (PS and ABS) sustainability. Therefore, future research is needed to investigate
were successfully produced with virgin Norway spruce and recy- environmental trade-offs of using secondary resources for WPC
cled particleboard. Results of physical properties showed: including the end-of-life of the composites.

 increased density (9e19%) and water absorption after 28 days

Acknowledgments
(4e12% in PS; 4e16% in ABS) of WPC by adding 30% and 60%
wood content respectively to the recycled plastic matrices
The research leading to these results was supported by the EU
 at 60% wood proportion, incorporation of recycled particleboard
through the Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) action
exhibited slightly lower (1%) water absorption after 28 days
CASTLE, Grant agreement no. 316020. The contents of this publi-
than Norway spruce
cation reflect only the author's view and the European Union is not
 physical properties of 60% wood-content WPC benefited from
liable for any use that may be made of the information contained
coupling agent (SMA) therein. Philipp Sommerhuber wishes to thank Dr. Rainer
Ko€ hnlechner for provision of WEplast recycled plastics and
Results of mechanical properties of WPC exhibited: Johannes Beruda, Tanja Potsch, Christiane Riegert, and Thomas
Schwarz for their excellent expertise and support in the
 linear increase of tensile and flexural MOE by increasing wood laboratories.
content
 tensile and flexural strength benefited by wood proportion
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5.3 Peer-reviewed paper III

Title Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites: Analysing alternative

materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option

Authors Philipp F. Sommerhuber (CD 60%, EX 90%, ED, 70%)

Dr. Jan L. Wenker (CD 20%, EX 10%, ED 30%)
Sebastian Rüter (CD 10%, EX 0%, ED 0%)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Krause (CD 10%, EX 0%, ED 0%)
Journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling
DOI 10.1016/[Link].2016.10.012

CD… Conceptual Design

EX… Conducting experiments
ED… Editing

Publications and additional results 59

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RECYCL-3397; No. of Pages 14 ARTICLE IN PRESS
Resources, Conservation and Recycling xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Resources, Conservation and Recycling

journal homepage: [Link]/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites: Analysing

alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound
end-of-life option
Philipp F. Sommerhuber a,∗ , Jan L. Wenker a , Sebastian Rüter a , Andreas Krause b
a
Thünen Institute of Wood Research, Leuschnerstr. 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany
b
Institute of Mechanical Wood Technology, Department of Wood Sciences, Leuschnerstr. 91c, 21031 Hamburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the drive towards a sustainable Bioeconomy, a growing interest in the development of composite
Received 10 May 2016 materials made of plastics compounded with wood particles, known as wood-plastic composites (WPC),
Received in revised form 19 October 2016 can be observed. Wood is seen as one of the cornerstones for sustainable economic growth, while the
Accepted 21 October 2016
use of thermoplastics from hydrocarbon fossil resources and additives for WPC potentially cause severe
Available online xxx
environmental impacts along the entire life cycle. In this study, the life cycle stages of raw material supply
and end-of-life pathways of WPC were assessed environmentally from different perspectives with life
Keywords:
cycle assessment (LCA). The utilization of alternative raw materials reflected the WPC producer’s point
Life cycle assessment
Wood-plastic composites
of view. Harmonized product LCA standards were applied and combined with physical parameters of
Resource efficiency actually produced composites to give credit to substitution potentials in terms of resource quality. The
Circular economy downstream pathways of post-consumer WPC products reflected the recycler’s perspective. A system
End-of-life LCA approach was needed where systems with equal functions were generated to secure a comparison of
Waste management end-of-life (EoL) treatment systems. Results showed that WPC produced from secondary materials is the
ecologically and technically superior alternative. Recycling of the composites would be the ecologically
preferable pathway, but the recycled WPC content in novel WPC is a sensitive issue when comparing
both EoL treatment systems. Yet, incineration of the composites is the predominant EoL pathway due to
current recycling directives and lack of markets for secondary WPC material.
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction A potential solution to overcome resource scarcity is seen in the

cascading use of biomass and in using by-products more efficiently
The European Bioeconomy Strategy highlights the use of wood in the wood-based products sector. Sirkin and Houten (1994) stated
as one of the cornerstones for a sustainable economic growth (EC, that “resource cascading has been utilized as a method for achieving
2012). The manifold alternatives for using wood led to a compe- resource conservation in contexts where resources have been regarded
tition between the various utilization pathways as a renewable as precious or vital”. The cascading principle is to some extent man-
energy carrier, as a renewable precursor for the chemical indus- ifested in national acts of the European member states with the
try and in the biofuel industry in context of promoting Sustainable execution of the European Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC
Development (UNCED, 1992; UNFCCC, 1998; UN, 1998). This raised (EC, 2008). This directive prioritizes the end-of-life (EoL) alter-
concerns of wood availability, especially due to direct and indirect natives of waste by demanding the so-called waste management
incentives for wood used as an energy carrier (Geldermann et al., hierarchy: (1) prevention, (2) preparing for re-use, (3) recycling
2016; Höglmeier et al., 2014). Mantau et al. (2010) concluded that (without any kind of incineration), (4) other recovery (i.e., energy
there will be not enough wood from sustainably managed forests recovery) and (5) disposal. In addition to cascading, various strate-
for the competitive markets of material use and fuelwood in 2030. gies and concepts, such as the Circular Economy on European level
(EC, 2011; EP, 2015; Haas et al., 2015) and ProgRess on German level
(BMUB, 2015), have been developed to strengthen recycling and
∗ Corresponding author. circulating materials aiming at an efficient utilization of resources.
E-mail addresses: [Link]@[Link] (P.F. Sommerhuber),
[Link]@[Link] (J.L. Wenker), [Link]@[Link] (S. Rüter),
[Link]@[Link] (A. Krause).

[Link]
0921-3449/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Sommerhuber, P.F., et al., Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites:
Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option. Resour Conserv Recy (2016),
[Link]
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RECYCL-3397; No. of Pages 14 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2 P.F. Sommerhuber et al. / Resources, Conservation and Recycling xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

1.1. Wood-plastic composites et al. (2012) conducted an LCA of solid and hollow WPC outdoor
deckings, comparing the results to solid wood deckings from trop-
In pushing towards a Bioeconomy, a growing demand can be ical Bilinga (Nauclea diderrichii) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris).
observed in composite materials made of plastics compounded The authors concluded that WPC had better environmental perfor-
with a significant share of wood particles, forming the so-called mance due to a prospective higher service life and less maintenance
wood-plastic composites (WPC) (Partanen and Carus, 2016). The than the solid wood deckings. In addition, Environmental Product
modifiable affinity of the molecular structure of the polymer Declarations (EPD) were published for WPC products in a German
matrix of thermoplastics in combination with various kinds of context, stating a reference service life of 30 years for deckings and
fillers, additives and reinforcement materials results in a functional 40 years for claddings according to manufacturers’ specifications
improvement of the neat polymer matrix (Klyosov, 2007). WPC is (IBU, 2015a,b). A combination of the functional unit and service life
defined “as a material or product made thereof being the result of should be seen critically, not only because WPC is facing durabil-
the combination of one or several cellulose-based material(s) with one ity challenges under outdoor conditions, which depends on macro
or several thermoplastics, intended to be or being processed through and micro-climate conditions as well as on the application con-
plastic processing techniques” (CEN, 2014a). text (Catto et al., 2016; Ibach et al., 2013). Methods for potential
According to Carus et al. (2015), about 260 kt of WPC were durability improvements can be linked to, for instance, chang-
produced in the year 2012 in Europe. The European WPC pro- ing processing conditions or adding additives (Stark and Gardner,
duction represents approximately 9% of the globally produced 2008). The possibility of using additives in WPC is one reason why
WPC. The outdoor deckings market is the biggest distribution these composites are often promoted to be comparable or even
channel for products made of WPC. In Germany, about 80% of better than solid wood deckings. However, the additives in synthe-
the distributed WPC deckings are in accordance with the “Qual- sized products and plastics are problematic for human health and
ity and test specifications for production control of deckings” of the environment along the entire life cycle (Thompson et al., 2009).
Qualitätsgemeinschaft Holzwerkstoffe e.V. (Qualitätsgemeinschaft Considering the EoL of WPC, the separation of wood parti-
Holzwerkstoffe e.V., 2016). According to this voluntary commit- cles and thermoplastic polymers from the composite is technically
ment, WPC should be derived from FSC-certified wood from challenging. During the compounding process of WPC, the ther-
sustainably managed forests or waste wood categorized as moplastic matrix is heated to the crystalline melting point (Tm ).
untreated, natural wood – class A I (German Government, 2003) Then, wood particles are added to the melted thermoplastic and
– with more than 50% wood content. The plastics shall be derived mechanically irreversibly bonded to the plastic-matrix. The WPC
from primary or post-industrial production (Qualitätsgemeinschaft matrix is cooled until the thermoplastic molecules solidify, which
Holzwerkstoffe e.V., 2016). is known as the glass transition temperature (Tg ) (Klyosov, 2007).
Recycling of post-consumer thermoplastic to secondary materials
1.2. Wood-plastic composites and the environment is possible in comparison to thermosets or elastomers, but recycling
of the constituents of WPC to secondary materials for cascading
WPC products replace either solid wood products (i.e., out- and improvement of resource efficiency is currently economically
door deckings and wall claddings in the building and construction unfeasible (Meinlschmidt et al., 2014; Sommerhuber et al., 2015).
sector) or neat plastic products (i.e., decorative claddings in the Among the LCA studies of WPC, Thamae and Baillie (2008) inves-
automotive sector). Geldermann et al. (2016) stated that WPC can- tigated the replacement of glass fibre reinforced polypropylene (PP)
not compete with solid wood with regard to the low environmental car door panel with a wood fibre reinforced PP panel. The EoL was
impact of wood, but is an environmentally friendly alternative to modelled using the avoided burden approach, which allocates the
neat plastics. Teuber et al. (2016) stated that WPC tend to be a pos- potential credits of energy generation of waste incineration to the
sible step in a cascading use of biomass before energy recovery of manufacturing of a product. Allocation of EoL processes is of major
the biomass. importance for the LCA results and is discussed critically within the
The environmental assessment of products and services is con- LCA community (Bergman et al., 2014a; Heijungs and Guinée, 2007;
ducted based on quantitative data by the life cycle assessment (LCA) Nicholson et al., 2009; Sandin et al., 2014). In the context of apply-
methodology, which is standardized in ISO 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and ing the waste management hierarchy (EC, 2008) on post-consumer
ISO 14044 (ISO, 2006b). The technical feasibility of producing WPC WPC, an ecological comparison is needed. The study of Väntsi and
from secondary or cascaded resources has been intensively ana- Kärki (2015) is an example of assessing the environmental pro-
lysed since the early 1990s, for instance by Yam et al. (1990), file of alternative materials for WPC (recycled mineral wool and
Youngquist et al. (1992), Adhikary et al. (2008), Ashori (2008), polypropylene) and its end-of-life treatment options (incineration
Sommerhuber et al. (2015) and Sommerhuber et al. (2016). To the with energy recovery versus landfill).
best of the authors’ knowledge, an ecological analysis based on
quantitative data is missing in all of these studies. Studies exist 1.3. Aim and objectives of the study
reporting on WPC produced with virgin raw materials on a labora-
tory scale for which an LCA was conducted ex ante (Hesser, 2015; The upstream processes (resource alternatives) as well as the
Mahalle et al., 2014; Qiang et al., 2012, 2014; Xu et al., 2008), with downstream processes of WPC need to be thoroughly ecologically
the focus on different alternative materials (Väntsi and Kärki, 2015) analysed. With the underlying assumption that it is technically
or focusing on integrating durability issues of WPC into LCA (Miller feasible to produce WPC completely from secondary materials
et al., 2015). (recycled wood and plastics), we ask the first research question
The following studies used the LCA methodology to compare (RQ 1):
WPC deckings to solid wood deckings. Bolin and Smith (2011) and
Bergman et al. (2013) conducted an LCA of solid WPC outdoor deck- (1) What is the ecological difference of WPC made from virgin vs.
ings with PE and HDPE as the plastics matrix with wood particles secondary materials?
from co-products. Both authors considered also recycled plastics
and concluded that WPC from recycled plastics is environmentally The focus is on the ex-ante LCA analysis of WPC compounds,
better than WPC from virgin plastics, but inferior to solid wood as manufactured and analysed prior in Sommerhuber et al. (2015)
deckings in the North-American context. However, a consideration and described in Section Product LCA. The thermoplastic matrix is
of technical functions and the application context is missing. Stübs HDPE compounded essentially with softwood particles (Table 1).

Please cite this article in press as: Sommerhuber, P.F., et al., Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites:
Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option. Resour Conserv Recy (2016),
[Link]
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Table 1 pared are not identical. Therefore, comparable systems have to be

Mass-related resource ratios and mechanical properties of WPC specimens from
formed, which is done by applying system expansion in this article.
Sommerhuber et al. (2015).
Fig. 1 shows the difference between the two research questions,
Materials Y30%wood Z60%wood pointing at different perspectives. The approaches can be named
YV YR ZV ZR “product LCA” for the processorı́s perspective and “system LCA” for
the recyclerı́s perspective.
Waste wood (category A II) – 29% – 58%
Recycled HDPE – 68% – 39%
Norway spruce 29% – 58% – 2.1. Product LCA
Virgin HDPE 68% – 39% –
MAPE 3% 3% 3% 3%
The LCA method as regulated by ISO 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and
Physical properties ISO 14044 (ISO, 2006b) is further specified for building products
Density [g/cm3 ] 1.05 1.05 1.17 1.16
in EN 15804 (CEN, 2013), and beyond that, especially for wooden
Stiffness building products in EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b). EN 15804 (CEN, 2013)
Flexural MoE [GPa] 1.55 1.58 2.77 2.62 and EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) focus on the LCA of a specific product
Tensile MoE [GPa] 1.74 1.65 2.87 2.74
with its respective life cycle phases. The single processes to provide
Strength the assessed product are further summarized to so-called modules.
Flexural strength [MPa] 33.6 31.4 42.3 31.6 Benefits and loads from recycling processes are assigned to a mod-
Tensile strength [MPa] 18.5 15.7 21.6 16.0
ule beyond the system boundary to separate recycling potentials
MoE-Modulus of Elasticity. from the original life cycle of the product.
V-virgin material.
R-secondary material.
2.1.1. System boundary
The product LCA considers a cradle-to-gate approach of a WPC
In context of a growing WPC market, where the European recy- compound as a semi-finished product. Fig. 2 illustrates the system
cling system will be facing a growing material complexity caused by boundary. The WPC compounds were manufactured on laboratory
post-consumer WPC in the near future, we ask the second research scale based on the work of Sommerhuber et al. (2015). The com-
question (RQ 2): pounds were produced from high-density polyethylene (HDPE)
granulates, wood particles and maleic anhydride polyethylene
(MAPE) as the coupling agent. The materials used were derived
(2) What is the environmentally preferable EoL option of the com-
either from virgin or secondary materials. The manufacturing pro-
posites: utilization as secondary fuel or as secondary material?
cess is described in the Supplementary information.

In addition, a qualitative discussion highlights the challenges

[Link]. Raw material supply (A1). In this article, the focus is on WPC
and problems generated by producing and disposing of WPC with
compounds derived from either 100% virgin wood and HDPE or
current technologies and political frameworks.
100% secondary wood and HDPE.
[Link].1. Virgin materials. The upstream processes of the pro-
2. Method duction of virgin wood particles from Norway spruce (Picea abies)
started with the biological production of soft wood logs. The logs
The research questions consider the environmental impacts of had 55% moisture content (mc) and were further processed to wood
the upstream process of WPC from cradle-to-gate (RQ 1) and the particles of approximately 10%-mc and <1 mm particle size. The
downstream pathways of the EoL of WPC (RQ 2). They can be further wood particles were the only timber product. It was assumed that
defined as the processor’s perspective (RQ 1), where the decision is no co-products were produced and therefore no allocation was
to use virgin or secondary materials for the production of WPC. needed. The LCI was analogously based on literature (Rüter and
From this perspective, the function of the compared systems is the Diederichs, 2012; Schweinle, 1996; Stübs et al., 2012; Wegener
provision of an amount of material with the same technical quality. et al., 2004). More details on LCI are provided in the Supplementary
More detail on the declared unit is presented in Section Declared information.
unit. The upstream processes of the production of virgin HDPE started
On the other hand, RQ 2 aims at the recycler’s perspective. It with the extraction of crude oil. Polyethylene is polymerized from
assesses the potential environmental impacts of different waste ethylene, which is extracted by cracking naphtha or natural gas
treatment technologies of post-consumer WPC products to address in a steam-cracker. The coupling agent MAPE is produced using
the cascading approach and the waste management hierarchy as 95% LLDPE and 5% maleic anhydride. Plastics data were taken from
stated above. In this case, the functions of the systems to be com- aggregated LCI datasets from LCA databases (ecoinvent Centre,

Fig. 1. Product LCA and system LCA in context of research questions.

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Fig. 2. System boundary of product LCA. Dotted lines and boxes mean cut-off.

2010; thinkstep, 2015). More details are provided in the Supple- 2.1.2. Declared unit
mentary information. The functional unit provides the physical reference to which the
[Link].2. Secondary materials from post-consumer packaging inputs and outputs of the LCA are related. It further reflects the pur-
waste. Using secondary materials from post-consumer waste pose of the product and refers to the goal and scope settings (ISO,
means, according to EN 15804 (CEN, 2013), that these materials 2006a). If the specific purpose of the product is not clear, i.e., in the
enter the product system after reaching the end-of-waste status in building context, the functional unit is changed to the declared unit
the system in which they were previously used. Derived from this according to EN 15804 (CEN, 2013). Hence, in this paper the func-
definition, secondary material is not to be called waste because it tional unit is considered as the declared unit because the products
had definitely reached the end-of-waste status. under study are modelled until they reach a semi-finished product
EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) clearly defines the end-of-waste status status: 1 kg WPC compound with given mechanical properties as
for wood and wood-based construction products. The end-of-waste presented in Table 1.
status is reached “after sorting and chipping/crushing of any post-
consumer wood excluding pressure impregnated wood, considering 2.1.3. Allocation
that a positive market value can be expected at this processing stage, In the case of virgin wood particles, forest management was
a specific purpose is defined (use as fuel, use in particle board pro- only dedicated to timber production (Rüter and Diederichs, 2012).
duction), the chipped wood fulfils the technical specifications of solid Timber was debarked at the wood processor. Debarking residues
fuels/chips for the production of particle boards and no hazardous were cut-off. Following EN 15804 (CEN, 2013), environmental bur-
substances exceeding legal limits can be expected” (CEN, 2014b). dens of waste treatment of residues originated in a process step –
In the case of WPC production, this means that the recycled which are not defined as co-products – have to be accounted to the
wood enters the product system in the shape of post-consumer product system under study until the end-of-waste criteria can be
wood chips including its material inherent properties of A1: wood applied. The potential secondary material or the energy generated
inherent biogenic carbon and embodied energy. The recycled HDPE from the recycling step is excluded from the system boundary. The
enters the product system in the shape of granulate and because of potential credits and burdens related to the use of these secondary
this, only the embodied energy from fossil carbon is accounted for. materials or fuels have to be accounted for in the separate, scenario-
The LCI of secondary wood particles is provided in the Supplemen- based module D. This module was not considered in the system
tary information. boundary of this study. EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) provides guidance
for the allocation procedures of reuse, recycling and energy recov-
[Link]. Transport (A2). The raw materials were transported with ery of wood-based products depending on whether the waste flow
a conventional truck, EURO 3 emission standard, a capacity load reaches the end-of-waste status or not. In the WPC case utilizing
of 17.3 t and 85% utilization rate for an average distance of 100 km. secondary material, the waste flow definitely reached the end-of-
Studies of previous LCA concluded that longer distances, i.e., 600 km waste status in the previous product system. This is why secondary
(Stübs et al., 2012), had no significant influence on the life cycle material was considered only with its material inherent properties.
impact assessment (LCIA) results of WPC. Allocation along the upstream processes of plastics, energyel as
well as other resources and materials was provided in aggregated
[Link]. Manufacturing (A3). This module comprised the com- datasets of the GaBi professional database (thinkstep, 2015) and the
pounding of raw materials to WPC compounds as a semi-finished ecoinvent database (ecoinvent Centre, 2010). Further information
product. According to the EN 15804 (CEN, 2013), emissions to air, is presented in the Supplementary information.
soil and water occurring by manufacturing and auxiliary mate-
rials are categorized to this module. The provision of electricity 2.1.4. Elementary analysis
(energyel ) and heat (energyth ) used for manufacturing was also Heavy metal contents in materials were analysed because they
categorized to this module. were expected (Dimitrakakis et al., 2009; Oguchi et al., 2013;
The efforts of secondary wood particle processing were analo- Schlummer et al., 2007; Sommerhuber et al., 2016). The ICP-
gously used from virgin wood particles (crushing, milling, drying; OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry)
emissions to air) with the exception of moisture content (33%- method (Moore, 1989) was used to analyse the elements silver (Ag),
mc). A sorting loss of 20% was assumed. The compounding process arsenic (As), bismuth (Bi), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium
needed 4 MJ/kg energyel (Stübs et al., 2012). (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and thallium (Tl) in recycled

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Fig. 3. System boundary of end-of-life system A—recycling. Dotted lines and boxes mean cut-off.

HDPE and waste wood, which were used in the WPC compound and Frischknecht, 2006; Klöpffer and Grahl, 2012). Especially for the
presented in Table 1. The recycled post-consumer HDPE from pack- assessment of waste treatment at the EoL where material or energy
aging materials is called recythen® HDPE, provided by INTERSEROH recovery leads to completely different products and functions, the
Dienstleistungs GmbH, Germany. The waste wood was provided by basket-of-benefits approach is a feasible method to perform an LCA
Buhck Umweltservices GmbH & Co. KG, Germany. It can be classi- to compare different EoL-options.
fied as waste wood of category A II according to the German Waste
Wood Directive (German Government, 2003), containing predom-
inantly post-consumer transport pallets and some post-consumer
2.2.1. System boundary
harvested timber products with a high softwood content.
In this study, we assumed that a market has been established for
The samples were separately ground and dissolved in Aqua regia
secondary WPC granulates. Therefore, a demand exists for post-
with multi-element standard solution, called Certipur® ICP multi-
consumer WPC products collected in context of recycling as a
element standard solution IV, provided by Merck KGaA, Germany,
valuable secondary material for novel WPC. A more detailed dis-
to determine the previously mentioned elements. The analysis was
cussion concerning the current political framework and recycling
conducted with an inductively coupled plasma atomic emission
of WPC is given in Section 3.2.
spectroscopy, called Thermo Scientific iCAP 6300 duo ICP/OES.
Fig. 3 illustrates the recycling pathway system A. Recycling of
WPC to secondary material is based on literature data from HDPE
2.2. System LCA recycling (Vidal et al., 2009), because recycling of WPC is more
related to plastics recycling than wood recycling. The complemen-
Although EN 15804 (CEN, 2013) and EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) give tary energyel and energyth need to be provided in system A in the
guidance on allocation at the end-of-life of a single product, which context of functionality and comparability to the energy recovery
was considered in the EPDs for WPC deckings and WPC claddings pathway (system B). Production of virgin WPC compound is cut-off
at IBU (2015a, 2015b), they are not applicable to compare the envi- because it is substituted by secondary WPC compound.
ronmental impacts of different waste treatment options. Therefore, In system B (Fig. 4), energy is recovered with respect to the net
a system LCA is needed where systems with equal functions are calorific value (NCV) of WPC in the context of waste-to-energy con-
generated to secure that the systems can be compared. version. Because post-consumer WPC is incinerated and no longer
When comparing two systems using the LCA method it is cru- available for recycling, virgin WPC needs to be produced and added
cial that both systems provide the same function (Fleischer and to system B, to provide the same function as and ensure the com-
Schmidt, 1996), and can be described by the same functional unit. parability to system A.
If this is not initially ensured, one has to equalize the systems by, The collection of waste and the transport to the recycling sites
for instance, expanding the product system, which does not provide were cut-off because these efforts are balanced equally for both
the additional function. The additional function is added to this sys- systems. Landfill of untreated organic products has been restricted
tem by adding the single supply chain of the missing function, the (EC, 2008) and was therefore not considered in this study.
so called complementary function (Fleischer and Schmidt, 1996). As
a result, the same function, and respectively the same functional
unit, is provided by both systems.
The system expansion to ensure equality of functions is widely 2.2.2. Functional unit
described and applied in literature, i.e., Fleischer and Schmidt The objective of an LCA for waste treatment is to assess the
(1996), Jungbluth and Frischknecht (2006), Heijungs and Guinée potential environmental impacts of different waste management
(2007), Höglmeier et al. (2014), Wäger and Hischier (2015). This strategies. Therefore, the functional unit is to manage 1 t of post-
approach is also referred as basket-of-benefits (Jungbluth and consumer WPC for both systems A and B.

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Fig. 4. System boundary of end-of-life system B—energy recovery. Dotted lines and boxes mean cut-off.

Table 2
Scenarios for system LCA.

Scenario System A—Recycling System B—Energy recovery

energyel (73%) energyth (27%) woodVirgin (%) plasticVirgin (%)

Basic Grid mix Natural gas 49 51

Renewable Energy Hydropower Biomass 49 51
Increased wood content Grid mix Natural gas 68 32

2.2.3. Scenarios The wood inherent carbon leaves the product system as +1 kg CO2
The underlying scenarios are listed in Table 2. MAPE was used as within modules A1 and A3 for wood burned in case of energy gen-
a coupling agent with 3% content in WPC. It was treated as a plastic eration within the production, and within the EoL stage (module
which raised the overall plastics content to 51% and decreased the C3) for the actual product itself because it is contained in the recy-
wood content to 49% in the “50:50” (wood:plastic) WPC matrix cled wood which has reached the end-of-waste status. Hence, the
in the basic scenario (100%–3% = 97% thereof calculating wood and biogenic carbon balance of a wood product is deemed to be neu-
plastics share). tral considering all modules from A to C. Summing up these aspects,
Speckels (2001) and Höglmeier et al. (2014) stated that the biogenic carbon neutrality can be assumed for virgin wood particles
source of energy crucially influences the equivalent system recy- derived from German forests. Wood inherent carbon contained in
cling, which cannot use waste wood as secondary fuel but uses recycled waste wood is considered the same way because it is still
conventional energy instead. Therefore, a “renewable energy” sce- a material inherent property in secondary materials. The biogenic
nario was considered which uses hydropower and biomass for CO2 is separately reported and discussed in the LCIA interpreta-
energy provision. tion phase, because the EoL module of the product LCA (module C)
In the context of energy recovery from secondary wood as the was not part of the analysis and the wood inherent biogenic carbon
favourable EoL pathway (Speckels, 2001), the wood content was would reduce the overall GWP emissions from cradle-to-gate. Fur-
increased to 70% to analyse the significance of wood content in the ther considerations of carbon emissions as outlined in, i.e., Bergman
post-consumer WPC products. et al. (2014b), was not considered in this article.

2.3. How to account for material inherent properties? 2.4. Software, databases and impact assessment method

Considering EN 15804 (CEN, 2013), and especially EN 16485 The LCA was carried out considering ISO 14040/44 (ISO, 2006a,
(CEN, 2014b), wood inherent biogenic carbon is treated as a mate- 2006b), EN 15804 (CEN, 2013) and EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) using
rial inherent property. According to EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b), the thinkstep GaBi LCA software version [Link] with GaBi professional
assumption of the biogenic carbon neutrality of wood is valid for database v6.115 (thinkstep, 2015) as well as the ecoinvent v2.2
wood from countries that have decided to account for article 3.4 database (ecoinvent Centre, 2010). Additionally, background data
of the Kyoto Protocol or for wood originating from forests, which for wood-based materials was taken from Thünen Institute's Öko-
are operating under established certificates schemes for sustain- HolzBauDat project (Rüter and Diederichs, 2012). For all processes,
able forest management. Under the described circumstances, the LCI data with German background was prioritised. More informa-
biogenic carbon content of wood, expressed as CO2 in the global tion is provided in the Supplementary information.
warming potential (GWP) parameter, is transferred to the product The CML-IA mid-point impact method (Guinée, 2002) was
system as −1 kg CO2 in the product stage (modules A1 and A3). used for the environmental impact assessment. The environmental

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Fig. 5. Environmental parameters of 1 kg WPC compound. Wood inherent biogenic carbon is excluded in GWP.

parameters to be assessed were chosen as required in EN 15804 The parameter GWP does not contain wood inherent biogenic car-
(CEN, 2013): global warming potential (GWP), depletion poten- bon at this point of analysis, as it would cause misleading messages
tial of the stratospheric ozone layer (ODP), acidification potential to account for wood inherent carbon in cradle-to-gate analyses.
of land and water (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), formation It would be accounted for as a negative value in module A1 but
potential of tropospheric ozone photochemical oxidants (POCP), accounted for as a positive value in module C3. Consequently, wood
abiotic depletion potential for non-fossil resources (ADPE), abiotic inherent biogenic carbon is not displayed in the GWP results for
depletion potential for fossil resources (ADPF). the cradle-to-gate system boundaries. It will be discussed later in
Section [Link].
In the 60% wood content WPC, the upstream processes of virgin
3. Results and discussion
wood particles slightly raises the weight of environmental param-
eters (GWP +8%, +11% EP, +8% AP, +10% ADPE, +5% ADPF). The
3.1. Life cycle impact analysis
production of the coupling agent MAPE in A1 is of major importance
for the ODP.
3.1.1. Product LCIA
Fig. 5 illustrates the cradle-to-gate (A1–A3) LCIA results of
1 kg semi-finished WPC compound. The potential environmental
[Link]. Secondary WPC. In contrast to the decrease of environmen-
impacts for WPC produced from secondary materials are lower
tal impacts due a higher ratio of wood particles in the virgin WPC
than WPC produced from virgin materials for each environmen-
matrix, a higher amount of secondary wood particles raises the
tal parameter but with the exception of POCP and ADPE. Details
potential environmental impacts of WPC from secondary materi-
are described below and hotspot analysis is presented in Table 3
als slightly. This can be related to the applied system boundary
showing the hotspots per WPC alternative (YV , YR , ZV , ZR ).
from the LCA standards EN 15804 (CEN, 2013) and EN 16485 (CEN,
2014b). According to the standards, secondary materials enter the
[Link]. Virgin WPC. If the virgin wood content is increased from system only with inherent properties in A1. The secondary plas-
30% to 60% in the virgin WPC matrix (YV , ZV ) the potential envi- tics can be used directly without pre-treatment for the production
ronmental parameters GWP, ODP, EP, AP and APDF exhibit a better of WPC in module A3. In contrast, secondary wooden material
performance (GWP −21%; ODP −17%; EP −21%; AP −27%; ADPF needs further separation and particle processing from wood chips
−33%). This can predominantly be related to the lower efforts for to wooden particles of the size of approximately <1 mm in module
the raw material supply of less virgin HDPE amount in module A1. A3.

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Table 3
Product LCIA hotspot analysis.

Y30%wood Z60%wood

YV YR ZV ZR

GWP 61% HDPE, 31% energyel 88% energyel 44% HDPE, 39% energyel 85% energyel
compounding, 5% wood compounding, 7% MAPE compounding, 13% wood compounding, 7% MAPE
particles particles
ODP 51% MAPE, 42% HDPE, 6% 90% MAPE, 10% energyel 62% MAPE, 29% HDPE, 7% 90% MAPE, 10% energyel
energyel compounding compounding energyel compounding compounding
EP 64% HDPE, 23% energyel 77% energyel 47% HDPE, 29% energyel 73% % energyel
compounding, 7% wood compounding, 12% MAPE compounding compounding, 10% MAPE,
particles 18% wood particles 10% wood particles
AP 74% HDPE, 18% energyel 80% energyel 58% HDPE, 25% energyel 76% energyel
compounding, 4% wood compounding, 13% MAPE compounding, 12% wood compounding, 12% MAPE,
particles particles 9% wood particles
POCP 98% are emissions to air from drying process of wood particles (see Supplementary information)
ADPE 68% energyel 91% energyel 65% energyel 88% energyel
compounding, 17% HDPE, compounding, 6% MAPE compounding, 21% wood compounding, 5% wood
11% wood particles particles, 10% HDPE particles
ADPF 81% HDPE, 12% energyel 75% energyel 70% HDPE, 18% energyel 73% energyel
compounding, 4% MAPE compounding, 21% MAPE compounding, 6% wood compounding, 21% MAPE
particles

V-virgin material.
R-secondary material.

Therefore, only the MAPE content is responsible for emissions in

A1. Overall, the potential environmental impacts can be predomi-
nantly related to the energyel for the compounding process in A3.
The hotspot in energy for the preparation of wood particles can be
traced to the provision of energyth for the drying of the particles,
which is only significant for the WPC with a 60% wood content. The
affected environmental parameters are EP and AP.
Transport processes (A2) are environmentally insignificant for
WPC alternatives, which is in accordance with literature (Stübs
et al., 2012). The higher environmental impacts of POCP (+97%)
in comparison to WPC from virgin materials can be related to the
emissions to air occurring in wood drying processes. It has to be
stated that foreground WPC processing differs completely from
wood processing for wood-based panels and detailed information
of emissions to air is lacking. The compounding temperature of the
WPC alternatives under study was 170 ◦ C. At temperatures between
Fig. 6. Wood inherent biogenic carbon of 1 kg WPC compound.
100 ◦ C and 200 ◦ C, heating of wood produces emissions of water
vapour, and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions (Borrega
and Kärenlampi, 2008). It can be expected, that VOC emissions to air ommended as a method in the context of human toxicity. The model
occur from HDPE and MAPE at theses temperatures as well, which is provides recommended and interim characterization factors for
likely to be higher from secondary HDPE. Further research is needed human health and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts (Hauschild et al.,
to provide quantitative data to implement emissions to air from 2008; Laurent et al., 2011; Rosenbaum et al., 2008; thinkstep, 2016).
WPC processing in the LCI. Future research on WPC processing may consider using the USE-
tox model (current version 2.0) developed by the United Nations
[Link]. Hazardous content. The elementary analysis showed con- Environment Program (UNEP) and the Society for Environment
tents of heavy metals in the secondary materials, which affects the Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative.
toxicity of the composites to air, soil and water (Table 4). In respect
to potential applications of WPC from these secondary materials, [Link]. Wood inherent biogenic carbon. Fig. 6 shows the carbon
threshold values of hazardous substances need to be considered in balance of wood assuming a carbon neutral balance according to
accordance with DIN EN 71-3 (DIN EN, 2002), for example. The stan- EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b) as described earlier. Carbon is part of the
dard is used for products made of particleboard, which are used in product system (A1) and stored in the product until it is released
domestic applications and in close contact to humans. The standard when reaching the end-of-waste status at the EoL stage (C3). In this
can be analogously used for WPC products in comparable appli- study, no additional wooden energy is used at the manufacturing
cations, i.e., outdoor deckings (Sommerhuber et al., 2016). These stage (A3), as is the case in harvested wood products (Rüter and
threshold values were not exceeded in the analysed materials. Diederichs, 2012; Wenker et al., 2016), for instance.
An LCIA interpretation is missing, as it would go far beyond
a midpoint LCIA and thus would need expanding the methodol- [Link]. Linking potential environmental parameters with physical
ogy. Pizzol et al. (2011a,b) compared different methodologies for parameters of WPC. The applicability of WPC products depends on
LCIA regarding the environmental impacts of metals on human their specific physical and mechanical performances. In applica-
health, on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The authors con- tions where stiffness is crucial, the modulus of elasticity (MoE) is
cluded that the comparison showed poor or no agreement between an important parameter. In applications where strength is crucial,
the methods. The differences are due mainly to the technique used strength properties are of superordinate relevance. Based on phys-
to calculate the characterization factors. The method USEtox is rec- ical evidence, Sommerhuber et al. (2015) concluded that the WPC

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Table 4
Heavy metal analysis of materials used in WPC compounds [unit = ppm].

Ag As Bi Cd Co Cr Cu Ni Pb Tl

rHDPE <LOD <LOD <LOD 8.82 5.22 9.28 7.32 0.47 6.52 <LOD
rWood <LOD <LOD <LOD <LOD 0.46 1.94 2.89 0.76 3.93 <LOD

LOD-limit of detection.
r-secondary material.

Table 5 As a result, the WPC compound with 60% secondary wood (ZR )
Increase of environmental parameters ( %) by linking physical parameters with
has a high substitution potential in the context of linking technical
product LCA.
and ecological parameters. Without this linkage, ZR showed slightly
Y30%wood Z60%wood higher potential environmental impacts than YR .
YV YR ZV ZR
a
Change in mass based on tensile MoE () 39% 43% - 1% 3.1.2. System LCIA
Change in environmental parameter ()
GWP 27% 5% – 5%
Fig. 8 presents the LCIA of the EoL of WPC by applying the
ODP 37% 39% – 1% basket-of-benefits approach. In the basic scenario, System A (recy-
EP 30% 10% – 1% cling) generates 1 t secondary WPC. In the equivalent System B
AP 32% 9% – 5% (energy recovery), the same amount is produced from virgin mate-
POCP 39% 43% – 1%
rials. Because post-consumer WPC is recycled to secondary material
ADPE 13% 4% – 1%
ADPF 34% 11% – 1% and not recovered to energy in System A, the system needs to
be expanded with conventional energy, which would have been
V-virgin material.
R-secondary material.
otherwise provided by incineration of the post-consumer WPC.
a
Reference. Therefore, System A requires 3590 MJ energyel from German grid
mix and 8300 MJ energyth from natural gas based on the NCV
made of 30% secondary wood and 70% secondary plastics (YR ) can of wood (18 MJ/kg) and plastics (36 MJ/kg) and the conversion
substitute products made of virgin materials (YV ). to energyel and energyth in the waste-to-energy plant. The same
The results of physical characteristics as shown in Table 1 were energy amount is generated through combined heat and power
linked to the product LCA to provide important information for waste incineration plants for wood and plastic treated as residual
substitution potentials of secondary materials for WPC. For this waste in the equivalent System B. In the renewable energy sce-
purpose, the tensile MoE was considered because it is linearly nario, the energyel was generated from German hydropower and
dependent on the cross-section of a cuboid material. If compar- the energyth from biomass in System A, which did not affect System
ing WPCs of different tensile MoE, the WPC with lower tensile MoE B. In the scenario with higher wood content (70% wood content),
can be adjusted by increasing the mass-input, which respectively the amount of required energy affected both systems. In System
increases the volume of the WPC cuboid (Fig. 7). It has to be stated A, the energyel from German grid mix decreased to 3090 MJ and
that other physical parameters would change by increasing the accordingly energyth from natural gas to 7160 MJ. Consequently,
mass input to increase the cross-section and respectively the ten- the same energy amount is produced by the waste incineration
sile MoE. However, this analysis was simplified to demonstrate how plants in system B.
LCA data should be linked with physical characteristics for thorough Recycling of WPC to yield secondary WPC material is the
discussion of substitution potentials of secondary materials. favourable EoL pathway for all potential environmental parameters
The tensile MoE of ZV (60% wood) was the reference because it with the underlying LCI, assumptions and analysed materials. This
exhibited the best tensile MoE (2.8 GPa) among the WPC alterna- result is in contrast to the basket-of-benefits LCIA results of waste
tives (Table 1). Therefore, the tensile MoE of the other composites wood (Speckels, 2001) and engineered wood products (Höglmeier
(YV , YR , ZR ) were adapted by linearly increasing the mass of the et al., 2014), but Wäger and Hischier (2015) found similar results
WPC. Energyel for compounding was kept constant at 4 MJ/kg. of the EoL pathways for WEEE plastics.
Table 5 shows the %-change () of the environmental parame- In addition, pointing at the WPC in this study the equivalent
ters (A1–A3) when the mass of the WPC compound is increased to energy for recycling was not as crucial as it had been concluded
achieve equal tensile MoE of the best alternative (Zv ). The potential in previous studies for wood products (Höglmeier et al., 2014;
environmental impacts of virgin WPC with 30% wood content (Yv ) Speckels, 2001), as can be seen in the scenario “renewable energy”.
are significantly increased in every parameter due to the increased Recycling was also beneficial in the scenario with higher wood con-
amount of virgin HDPE. Its counterpart made of secondary mate- tent (70%) in the WPC-matrix. In all three scenarios, the recycling
rials (YR ) shows significantly higher values in the OPD and POCP. activities for provision of secondary WPC in System A were a minor
The increase in ODP can be explained by the increased content of hotspot in context of GWP (11%—without wood inherent biogenic
MAPE, whereas the POCP was influenced by the emissions to air carbon), ADPF (13%), AP (18%) and EP (20%), in the basic scenario for
originating from the drying processes of wood particles. instance. Nevertheless, it became significant for ODP (78%), POCP

Fig. 7. Increasing the cross-section of a WPC cuboid by increasing mass-input and respectively the height and volume.

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Fig. 8. LCIA of EoL pathways of WPC: recycling vs. energy recovery.

(97%) and ADPE (44%). The hotspots can be traced back to the energy from bulky waste if recycling to secondary materials is desired.
needed for the recycling steps of post-consumer WPC to secondary According to Meinlschmidt et al. (2014), near infrared (NIR) spec-
material and for the provision of virgin WPC in the secondary WPC troscopy is suitable to sort different WPC based on their molecular
granulate formula. Because only 3% virgin WPC was used based on composition in the context of plastics into homogenous fractions
data analogously used from plastics recycling (Vidal et al., 2009), (PE-WPC, PP-WPC etc.). Li et al. (2015) showed that a combina-
the virgin WPC and thereof the virgin plastics content was identi- tion of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and partial
fied as an ecologically sensitive issue in the system LCA. least squares regression (PLSR) is promising in the context of deter-
Therefore, an additional scenario was considered by increasing mining the share of wood and plastics in post-consumer WPC.
virgin WPC content in a secondary WPC formula based on the basic Automated sorting techniques are currently not economically fea-
scenario assumptions. If the share of virgin WPC in the secondary sible for post-consumer wood (Meinlschmidt et al., 2013), but an
compound WPC formula is increased to 50%, the environmental economic evaluation for post-consumer WPC is lacking and should
profile of recycling (system A) becomes close the profile of energy be considered for future research.
recovery (system B) in the environmental parameters GWP (-4%), The use of secondary WPC in novel WPC production needs to be
ODP (-0.1%), POCP (-0.1%), ADPE (-42%), APDF (-2%). As a result, if technically feasible. Research results addressing recycling WPC to
virgin WPC material is needed in the secondary WPC formula, the produce novel WPC is limited. Schirp and Hellmann (2013) demon-
use of secondary plastic should be considered. strated that flexural strength tests (flexural MoE, flexural strength,
elongation at Fmax ) and water absorption were positively affected
when producing novel WPC from 20 wt-% secondary WPC and
3.2. Qualitative environmental considerations for the end-of-life 66 wt-% fresh WPC by adding a significant amount of stabilizers.
of WPC As we examined in a previous section, a high amount of virgin WPC
in the secondary WPC matrix leads to higher potential environmen-
In previous sections, results showed that recycling of WPC is the tal impacts than the energy recovery alternative. As a result, using
environmentally preferable pathway of handling post-consumer 2/3 of fresh WPC and 1/3 of secondary WPC in novel WPC would
WPC. In practice, post-consumer WPC needs to be sorted out not be an ecologically feasible option.

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Fig. 9. Data on production and post-consumer of plastics and WPC adapted from Plastics Europe (2015) and Carus et al. (2015).

3.2.1. Environmental issues of currently applied end-of-life insufficient quality. This amount is incinerated or just landfilled,
pathways which is still the number one EoL pathway for plastics in Europe.
In this section, the question is raised, what is done in every day Therefore, the biggest share of post-consumer plastics is ener-
businesses concerning the EoL of WPC and how does this affect the getically recovered in incineration plants or simply landfilled
environment? without any recovery. This implies severe environmental prob-
In the EU, the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (EC, 2008) lems, such as the diffusion of (micro)plastics in the environment
is mandatory for the Member states. It aims at protecting “the envi- (Essel et al., 2015; Rochman et al., 2015) resulting from littering,
ronment and human health by preventing or reducing the adverse insufficient collection or landfill systems due to non-implemented
impacts of the generation and management of waste and by reduc- recycling acts. Additionally, hazardous chemical reactions and sub-
ing overall impacts of resource use and improving the efficiency of such stances like halogenated organic compounds (PCB, PCP) from PVC
use [. . .]” by following the waste management hierarchy. Crucial for materials or polychlorinated dibenzo-dioxins (PCDD) and furans
any recycling activities is an established market, characterized by (PCDF) may be generated by incineration and insufficiently filter
demand and supply of the secondary material or fuel. This market systems.
exists for post-consumer plastics and wood, but up until now not for According to market data (Carus et al., 2015), PVC is of major
post-consumer WPC. Secondary wood and plastic can be recycled importance for the European WPC-production. In 2015, Environ-
in an open-loop system to products different from the predecessor mental Product Declarations (EPD) were published for the average
products. For instance, wooden pallets are recycled to particle- WPC outdoor decking. The data was derived from 80% of the Ger-
boards and plastic bottles to textile fibres. Both the mentioned man WPC decking companies (IBU, 2015b). In addition, an EPD
wood and plastic products can be categorized as packaging mate- was released for the average WPC outdoor cladding (IBU, 2015a)
rials for which national recycling systems have been established, representing the production of 100% of the German WPC cladding
such as the “Duales System” in Germany or the Austrian Recy- companies. Table 6 shows the supplied data on materials input,
cling Agency, which are based on the Extend Producer Responsibility showing that the average WPC product contains PVC (or PE and
(EPR) and national acts, such as the German Packaging Materials PP) and 8% additives. Especially the PVC content and the additives
Ordinance (German Government, 1998). in plastic products are likely to make these materials toxic to the
A balanced market for demand and supply of secondary WPC environment and human health at the EoL (Thompson et al., 2009).
is needed for an efficient recycling system, but due to the small
number of stakeholders and the low production of WPC in Europe
3.2.2. Outlook
(260 kt) this is currently not available today. Fig. 9 demonstrates
WPC should be treated as post-consumer plastic material in the
the amount of hydrocarbon plastic production in the EU-27 includ-
context of its molecular structure and recycling affinity. In addi-
ing Norway and Switzerland. According to Plastics Europe (2015),
these countries contribute to 20% of the global plastics production
each year. About 80% is used within the EU-27 for the production
Table 6
of various plastics assortments (i.e., PE, PP, HDPE, PVC, ABS) for Input materials according to published EPD for WPC outdoor deckings and claddings
a wide range of product categories, such as packaging materials. (IBU, 2015a,b).
Only a small amount of these plastic assortments is recycled due to
Material Description Ø (%)
an insufficiently established market, which still has great potential
to expand. It may be also questioned, whether the numbers pre- Wood fibres Co-products from sawmill 63
Plastic matrix PE, PP, PVC 29
sented by Plastics Europe (2015) represent the reality with respect
Additives Coupling agent, lubricant, 8
to the share of recycling vs. energy recovery. A significant amount pigments, filler, dispersing
of plastic residues is discarded during recycling processes due to agent

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tion, an adaption of recycling techniques is required if complex plastics and additives in the WPC product. At the EoL, WPC have
composite materials are to shape the future of the Bioeconomy. to be treated as bulky or hazardous household waste to be inciner-
According to Woidasky and Hirth (2012) innovation in technol- ated, which leads to environmental problems and a loss of valuable
ogy is still regarded as the route to move towards a sustainable materials.
society. Molecular sorting (Forberger and Becker, 2016; Woidasky
and Hirth, 2012; Woidasky et al., 2016), and fluorescence sorting Acknowledgements
(Langhals et al., 2014, 2015) in addition to NIR (Meinlschmidt et al.,
2014) are potential technological options based on molecular recy- The research leading to these results has been supported by the
cling in comparison to the bulk sorting applied today. Nevertheless, EU through the Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) action
market and economic constraints will remain crucial. CASTLE, Grant agreement no. 316020. The contents of this publica-
tion reflect only the author’s view and the European Union is not
4. Conclusions liable for any use that may be made of the information contained
therein.
The aim of the study was to analyse the potential environmental
impacts of using alternative materials for WPC production and find- Appendix A. Supplementary data
ing the desirable EoL pathway for the composites. This was done
by using the LCA method. In the context of assessing the ecolog- Supplementary data associated with this article can be found,
ical difference of WPC made from virgin vs. secondary materials in the online version, at [Link]
(RQ 1), the product LCA methodology was chosen based on the LCA 10.012.
standards EN 15804 (CEN, 2013) and EN 16485 (CEN, 2014b).
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and use of EU forests. Final report, Hamburg, Germany. Prod. 110, 9–15.
Meinlschmidt, P., Berthold, D., Briesemeister, R., 2013. Neue Wege der Sortierung Thamae, T., Baillie, C., 2008. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of wood-polymer
und Wiederverwertung von Altholz. In: Thomé-Kozmiensky, K.J., Goldmann, D. composites. A case-study. In: Oksman Niska, K., Sain, M. (Eds.), Wood-Polymer

Please cite this article in press as: Sommerhuber, P.F., et al., Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites:
Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option. Resour Conserv Recy (2016),
[Link]
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thinkstep, 2016. USEtox description. [Link] Holzwerkstoffen und Restholzsortimenten als Grundlage für produktbezogene
gabi-lcia-documentation/usetox/ (accessed 21.03.16.). Ökobilanzen, München, Kuchl.
Thompson, R.C., Moore, C.J., Vom Saal, F.S., Swan, S.H., 2009. Plastics, the Wenker, J.L., Achenbach, H., Diederichs, S.K., Rüter, S., 2016. Life cycle assessment
environment and human health. Current consensus and future trends. Philos. of wooden interior doors in Germany. A sector-representative approach for a
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pdf (accessed 20.11.15.). Ing. Tech. 84 (7), 969–976.
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Agenda 21, New York. Trenntechnologien für eine Green Economy. Chem. Ing. Tech. 88 (4), 403–408.
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[Link]#page=31 (accessed 20.11.15.). wood fibers with recycled high density polyethylene. Polymer Eng. Sci. 30 (11),
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Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option. Resour Conserv Recy (2016),
[Link]
5.4 Case study: LCA of ECOLIFE® window
Table 11 presents the environmental parameters of ECOLIFE® from cradle-to-gate. The
environmental hotspots can be clearly linked to the supply chains of raw materials (module A1).
Transports (A2) are of minor environmental importance for this product system, but certainly
not negligible. Manufacturing (A3) is of minor importance as well when compared to module A1.
The environmental loads in manufacturing are derived from provision of energyel, auxiliary
materials and packaging materials.

Table 11. Potential environmental impacts of the product stage (cradle-to-gate) of

ECOLIFE® window system; wood inherent biogenic carbon is excluded in GWP.

Product stage
Environmental parameter Unit
A1 A2 A3
Global warming potential (GWP) kg CO2-eq. 120.6 1.5 9.0
Ozone depletion potential (ODP) kg CFC11-eq. 2.3E-07 5.7E-13 1.9E-12
Acidification potential (AP) kg SO2-eq. 0.7 0.0 0.1
Eutrophication potential (EP) kg (PO4)3-eq. 8.5E-02 3.2E-03 4.8E-03
Formation potential of tropospheric ozone kg ethene-eq. 2.2 0.0 0.0
photochemical oxidants (POCP)
Abiotic depletion potential for non-fossil resources kg Sb-eq. 4.7E-03 5.4E-08 5.8E-07
(ADPE)
Abiotic depletion potential for fossil resources MJ 1742 20 186
(ADPF)

The environmental hotspots of ECOLIFE® is presented in Figure 8 and Figure 9 by presenting

cumulated cradle-to-gate results (A1–A3) for each process step (P1–P4) to discuss the
environmental share of WPC manufacturing in a product system. The WPC profile is produced in
steps P1–3. It is questionable if the aluminium stripe should be included in the eco-profile of the
WPC profile. However, it is necessary for strength and rigidity improvements for the WPC profile
as well as to satisfy decorative effects. Therefore, it is included for this LCIA interpretation.

The supply chain of aluminium, energyel and virgin HDPE are the major contributors for the
GWP, what is also visible for AP, EP and ADPF. The supply of virgin wood particles becomes an
environmental hotspot for AP and EP, which is linked to the long shipping distance (A2)
between Germany to China. The air emissions produced by drying the wood particles are the
main contributor to POCP. Reliable data is missing for emissions to air of foreground WPC
processes. The ODP is clearly dominated by foaming agents in the PUR hot melt. The ADPE is
influenced by the estimated static lifetime of the non-fossil (mineral) resources needed for
window assembly in P4.

Publications and additional results 74

 Environmental contribution of co-extruded WPC profile
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40% P 4 - Window assembling

30% P 3 - Al sheet wrapping

20%
P 2 - Co-Extrusion WPC profile
10%
P 1 - WPC Granulating
0%
GWP ODP AP EP POCP ADPE ADPF
131 2E-07 0.78 0.09 2.2 4.7E-03 2000
kg CO₂-eq kg CFC11-eq kg SO₂-eq kg (PO₄)³-eq kg Ethene-eq kg Sb-eq MJ

Figure 8. LCIA contribution of the co-extruded WPC profile. Each process (P) is the
cumulated LCIA from cradle-to-gate (A1 – A3); wood inherent biogenic carbon is
excluded in GWP

Environmental hotspot analysis of ECOLIFE®

100% Rest
90% P 4 - PVC accessoires
80% P 4 - Functional Hardware set

70% P 4 - Energyₑ
P 4 - Glass
60%
P 3 - PUR hot melt
50%
P 3 - Aluminium stripe
40% P 2 - HDPE virgin
30% P 2 - Energyₑ
20% P 1 - Additives
10% P 1 - Energyₑ
P 1 - Wood powder
0%
GWP ODP AP EP POCP ADPE ADPF
131 2E-07 0.78 0.09 2.2 4.7E-03 2000
kg CO₂-eq kg CFC11-eq kg SO₂-eq kg (PO₄)³-eq kg Ethene-eq kg Sb-eq MJ

Figure 9. LCIA hotspot analysis; wood inherent biogenic carbon is excluded in GWP

Figure 10 illustrates the carbon balance of wood assuming a carbon neutral balance according to
EN 16485. The wood inherent biogenic carbon is derived from wood particles and wood
transport pallets (A1) and stored in the product until it is released when reaching the end of
waste status at the EoL stage (C3).

Wood inherent biogenic carbon

[kg CO2-eq.]
-40 -20 0 20 40

A1 -24
Input
C3 24 Output

Figure 10. Wood inherent biogenic carbon of ECOLIFE®

Publications and additional results 75

6 Discussion and synthesis

6.1 Identification of potential secondary materials for WPC

Addressing the overarching research question:

(1) Which secondary materials from which waste streams can be identified to substitute
primary (virgin) materials in WPC production?

Statistical data from Destatis and eurostat varied considerably from data found in reports, such
as market data on German (waste) wood flows (Mantau 2012b, 2015; Mantau et al. 2012;
Seintsch & Weimar 2012, 2013) and secondary plastics (Consultic 2014; Plastics Europe 2015;
Villanueva & Eder 2014).

After studying and comparing statistical data and market data, the data from the above-
mentioned reports were found to be more accurate. On the plastics side, they reflect the specific
type of polymers from specific product categories: packaging, electronical equipment etc. In the
statistical databases, the specific material within the category is unknown. Waste is classified in
the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) (EC 2014). For example, plastics from lightweight
packaging (assortments of PE, PP and others) are categorized as EWC 15 01 02. The cross
amount of this category is first allocated to recycling in the statistical database, but after sorting
a substantial amount is rejected due to impurities and residuals. These rejects are further
incinerated and recounted in the databases (EUWID 2015; Thomé-Kozmiensky 2013).
Concerning waste wood, categories are used to label the waste wood based on the level of
contaminations (A I, A II, A III and A IV). Some waste wood assortments are categorized from
different contamination levels in the same EWC in statistical databases.

6.1.1 Secondary wood particles

About 72 x 106 m³/yr of coniferous and non-coniferous roundwood are consumed in Germany,
as visualized in Figure 11. About 36% of roundwood are used as fuelwood only without being
used as saw logs or industrial roundwood first in terms of using its carbon storage potential.
Fibre- and particleboards consumes 10.5 x 106 m³/yr of industrial roundwood. Post-consumer
wood constitutes 10.9 x 106 m³. Energy recovery of waste wood is the predominant EoL option
(78%). The German particleboard industry uses 20% post-consumer wood to substitute virgin
particles. Disposal in landfills is almost negligible (Mantau et al. 2012) due to the ban on organic
waste materials in accordance to the European Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (EC
2008).

Discussion and synthesis 76

Figure 11. Roundwood and waste wood consumption in Germany; imports are excluded

Table 12 shows the amount of wood particles consumed by German and European producing
WPC companies. It was not possible to allocate the wood particles to the coniferous and non-
coniferous wood flow because the share is unknown.

Table 12. Wood particles consumed for WPC production;

Conversion factor t to m³ = 4.9, based on 0.2 g/cm³ bulk density (measured) of
Norway spruce particles (Benthien et al. 2016). WPC data for calculation based on
Carus et al. (2015a); *forecasted, base year was 2012 and 20%/yr production growth
was assumed

2010 2012 2015* 2017* 2019*

(in 1x 10³) t m³ t m³ t m³ t m³ t m³
Europe 100 491 118 580 149 729 179 875 214 1,049
Germany 45 221 53* 261 67 328 80 394 96 473

Although the amount of wood particles consumed by the WPC sector is small (2% of total fibre
and particleboard producing industry), resource efficiency in the German wood sector is likely
to become more important in terms of the political push to use more wood resources in
products and as energy carrier (BMEL 2014; EC 2012b). Waste wood of category A II (mixed
A II) and post-consumer particleboard (A II) can be identified on a quantitative relevance basis
to substitute virgin or co-product particles in WPC. The largest share of post-consumer wood
(5 x 106 t/yr = 70%) can be classified as A III, which is a mixture of untreated, treated, and
contaminated waste wood. A separation into fractions of this amount for recycling (A I – A II)
and energy recovery (A III – A IV) would presume an intensified and cost-intensive separation
process which strongly influences the chosen management option for recovered wood
(Meinlschmidt et al. 2013; Meinlschmidt et al. 2014; Merl et al. 2007). If a separation becomes

Discussion and synthesis 77

feasible and wood becomes more viable in terms of resource cascading (Sirkin & Houten 1994),
about 30% (1.3 x 106 t/yr.) of currently energetically used post-consumer wood could be
additionally mobilized as secondary material according to data from BAV (2012) based on
Mantau et al. (2012). This amount is currently burned in small/medium combustion plants
regulated by 1st BImschV (German Government 2010).

A competing demand for secondary wood exists as the particleboard industry is already using
secondary wood particles (20%). Combined heat and power plants or energy intense industries
using secondary wood fuel to substitute fossil energy resources are the biggest competitors to
the use of waste wood as a secondary material instead as a secondary fuel. This is the result of
specific policy frameworks (EC 2009; German Government 2014). As visible in Figure 12, also
secondary wood prices are rising, but remain well below the price for specialized virgin wood
particles from softwood (250–400 €/t) (Carus et al. 2015b) and wood co-products. Financial
incentives based on the EEG for utilizing secondary wood fuel were highlighted to push the price
for wood assortments according to Härtl & Knoke (2014) and Höglmeier et al. (2014). However,
the incentives are not a major influence on the price development of fuelwood, according to
Bioökonomierat (2016), and also not likely to influence the price of waste wood in the near
future. It is more related to the price for crude oil. The increase in oil prices resulted in a fall
from the peak in June 2008 (135 USD/bbl) to an unexpected 28 USD/bbl in January 2016. At first
glance, the price for waste wood seems to follow the same dependency. This is likely because in
times where oil is cheap, there is no need for a renewable energy alternative in context of
ecological economics principles (Neumayer 2013; Perman et al. 2003). This should result in
decreasing prices of waste wood on the one hand to a sufficient supply of waste wood utilizable
as secondary material. This tendency is already visible (Figure 12). However, this would only be
one argument for decreasing waste wood prices.

Waste wood prices [< 150 mm particle size]

60
50
40
30
20
10
€/t dry air

0
-10 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
-20
-30 A I - untreated waste wood
-40 A II-III - treated waste wood
-50 A IV - contaminated waste wood
-60

Figure 12. Nominal waste wood prices. Data based on EUWID Recycling und Entsorgung
and EUWID Holz- und Holzwerkstoffe (multiple issues of years 2005–2015) and
BAV (2012)

Discussion and synthesis 78

6.1.2 Secondary thermoplastic polymers
Plastic waste and its recycling play an essential part in the circular economy. The EU-27
generates about 25 x 106 t/yr of plastic waste – tendency growing – which is more than half of
the yearly produced amount of virgin plastics. In Germany, plastic packaging constitutes the
largest plastics market share, but plastic packaging materials are intended, in most cases, to
have a short life cycle. About 1.53 x 106 t/yr of lightweight plastic packaging waste is collected
separately in context of the German Packaging Materials Ordinance (German Government 1998).
Of these packaging materials, thermoplastic polyolefins (LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE and PP) comprise
the biggest share (Plastics Europe 2015). In Germany, about 30 x 10³ t of PE and
44 x 10³ t of PP (both virgin or post-industrial) were used for WPC decking production in the
year 2012 (Carus et al. 2015a). About 500 x 10³ t/yr of PE and 200 x 10³ t/yr of PP from
packaging waste are recycled to secondary plastics. So, based on this quantitative evaluation,
secondary polyolefins would be readily available for substituting virgin materials in WPC.
Nevertheless, export flows of secondary plastics should be studied in detail for future research.

In addition to post-consumer polyolefins from packaging, secondary plastics from controlled

WEEE recycling are a promising alternative for utilization in WPC. An amount of 12 x 106 t of
WEEE is expected by the year 2020. Of that, about 1.5 x 106 t of ABS and PS are contained in
WEEE and should be available on the recycling market due to legislative requirements (EC
2012a; Köhnlechner 2014; Salhofer et al. 2015; Vidal-Legaz et al. 2016) in context of economic
and environmental concerns related to illegal WEEE trade (Huisman et al. 2015; Premalatha et
al. 2014). The use of virgin PS and ABS for WPC is currently not practiced in Germany, although
some manufacturers in the USA are using PS (Klyosov 2007). ABS is much higher in price than
polyolefin thermoplastics (EUWID 2016d).

WPC would be a value added product made of these secondary polymers, as they are readily
available and plastic recyclers are looking for new markets. German recycling companies are
already struggling due to the competition from virgin plastic converters (EUWID 2016a) as the
profitability of using secondary plastics depends on the prices of crude oil and its virgin plastics.
From the viewpoint of a manufacturer, using virgin plastics is cheaper in times of USD 30,-/bbl
than adding secondary materials to the material formulation of products. Utilization of
secondary granulates may only be economically feasible at crude oil price of ≥ 51 USD/bbl
(45 €) (EUWID 2016b). The current crude oil price is still well below 51 USD/bbl (May 2016).
Therefore, economic incentives for secondary materials are especially needed in times, when
virgin materials are cheaper than the substitutable secondary materials as proposed by the
“Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe” (EC 2011b).

Discussion and synthesis 79

However, looking at Figure 13, price for secondary HDPE (930 €/t ± 55) were two thirds of the
price of virgin HDPE (1375 €/t ± 250) at a crude oil price of 37 €/bbl (max.) in March 2016
(Anonymous 2016; EUWID 2016c, 2016d). Prices of secondary ABS and PS are also about two
thirds of the price of virgin plastics. With the underlying assumptions of recycling costs from
post-consumer waste to secondary plastics (Villanueva & Eder 2014), using wood co-products
would be the economically most feasible alternative for WPC. The price for additives are
approximately in the same range as the standard thermoplastics prices, reducing even more the
overall costs of the wood particles in WPC. Therefore, fluctuations in the price of wood particles
are not likely to be not as critical for the WPC-processing industry as they are for engineered
wood products with about 90% wood content, such as particleboards. Additional Sankey
diagrams for secondary ABS and PS from WEEE and PP from packaging waste are provided in
the supervised Master thesis of Wang (2016).

1800
Value adding costs
1600 Price of resource
1375*
1400
1200
830*
1000
€/t

800
600
320*
400
218 205
200 151

0
Industrial Wooden co- A I (post- A II-III (post- Virgin HDPE Recycled HDPE
roundwood products consumer) consumer)
(spruce & pine)
Wood Plastics

Figure 13. Price of neat materials and their value adding costs to be utilizable in
WPC. Price information reflects market situation March–April 2016. Data from EUWID
Recycling und Rohstoffe, Gerling (2016), Villanueva & Eder (2014), Kunststoff
Information (2016), Carus et al. (2015b). *margin included; Wood co-products and
waste wood are processed at the WPC manufacturer which costs are based on
assumptions

6.2 Qualitative aspects of using secondary materials in WPC

Addressing the overarching research questions:

(2) What are the differences in physical and mechanical properties of WPC produced from
secondary materials in comparison to their virgin counterparts?
(3) What obstacles need to be considered in terms of applicability?

6.2.1 Physical properties

Table 13 provides a comprehensive overview of the physical properties of laboratory-scaled
WPCs. The incorporation of wood particles into the plastic matrices resulted in a higher density

Discussion and synthesis 80

of WPC in comparison to the neat materials. Although the density of Norway spruce (Picea abies)
is approximately 0.43 g/cm³, in WPC, the wood lumens are filled with the thermoplastic
polymers and squeezed during the compounding process. The density of the wood cell wall is
approximately 1.4 g/cm³ (Kollmann 1951), which increases the plastic matrix to a density of the
WPC to > 1 g/cm³. The density of wood particles was not investigated in detail. It is very likely
that the density of the different wood sources were equal. This is because the density of the
HDPE sources was approximately 0.95 g/cm³ and secondary wood materials from mixed waste
wood A II and particleboard contained a high share of softwood, mostly spruce and pine.

Table 13. Physical properties of WPC with 60% wood content including coupling
agent. WW… post-consumer waste wood (mixed A II), PB… post-industrial particleboard
(A II). Standard deviation in greyish subscript

Density (g/cm³) Water absorption after 28 days (%)

WPC incorporated with… WPC incorporated with…
Neat Norway Neat Norway
WW PB WW PB
plastic spruce plastic spruce
pHDPE 0.950.001 – 1.160.003 – 0.10.1 – 6.10.3 –
rHDPE 0.960.001 1.170.002 – – 0.80.1 4.00.2 – –
rPP 0.920.001 1.140.003 – 1.140.003 0.10.3 7.90.4 – 8.30.2
rABS 1.050.001 1.250.003 – 1.240.008 0.70.1 9.60.2 – 8.20.1
rPS 1.040.002 1.250.001 – 1.240.003 0.20.1 13.20.1 – 11.60.1

According to EN 15534-4 (CEN 2014b) water absorption of WPC decking is required to be ≤ 7%

(mean) in terms of durability. This was only achieved with secondary HDPE-WPC with waste
wood A II from post-consumer packaging materials and their virgin counterparts but not with all
other tested specimens.

6.2.2 Mechanical properties

The applied manufacturing process is a crucial parameter for the mechanical properties of WPC
(Krause et al. 2013; Kumari et al. 2007; Migneault et al. 2008; Migneault et al. 2014). Two
different process techniques were applied. The WPC specimens of mixed waste wood (A II) were
produced in a laboratory-internal mixer, and compression moulded in a computerized hydraulic
hot press. Specimens containing post-industrial particleboard were extrusion-compounded and
injection moulded. Both processes resulted in different rheological flow abilities for the WPC
compound and its resulting mechanical properties. This is visible in higher standard deviations
of compression moulded WPCs (Table 14). The wood content distracts the flow ability of plastics
molecules during the melting process (Cui et al. 2010), regardless whether virgin or secondary
wood particles were used. Flow is also affected by the MFI of the plastics, the content of wood
particles, and the additives (Krause et al. 2013; Kumari et al. 2007; Migneault et al. 2014; Teuber
et al.). In addition, the molecular structure of the monomers, which determine the type and

Discussion and synthesis 81

density of the neat thermoplastic polymers, were also a crucial influence on the mechanical WPC
properties.

Table 14. Mechanical properties. p…primary, r…secondary, W…Norway spruce, WW… post-
consumer waste wood (mixed A II), PB… post-industrial particleboard (A II), M…
MAPP, S… SMA

Charpy
Flexural tests Tensile tests
impact test
Strength Elongation Strength Impact
fMoE tMoE
WPC Fmax at break Fmax strength
(GPa) (GPa)
formulation (MPa) (%) (MPa) (kJ/m²)
MV SD MV SD MV SD MV SD MV SD MV SD
pHDPE 25.4 0.62 0.99 0.04 1.10 0.05 26.2 1.87 23.8 0.79 - -
rHDPE 25.1 0.82 0.91 0.06 1.05 0.03 23.5 2.84 23.1 0.49 - -
pHDPE/W30 33.6 2.12 1.55 0.16 1.74 0.09 3.33 0.34 18.5 0.57 8.35 1.52
rHDPE/WW30 31.4 2.00 1.58 0.14 1.65 0.06 2.65 0.29 15.7 0.37 7.61 1.48
pHDPE/W60 42.3 4.30 2.77 0.42 2.87 0.06 1.60 0.12 21.6 0.63 7.97 2.36
rHDPE/WW60 31.6 2.50 2.62 0.20 2.74 0.08 1.06 0.05 16.0 0.42 5.42 1.07
rPP - - 1.10 0.02 1.32 0.01 24.5 6.72 22.4 0.08 - -
rPP/W30 37.3 0.33 2.50 0.02 2.81 0.03 3.30 0.47 20.5 0.09 - -
rPP/PB30 37.2 0.47 2.34 0.03 2.46 0.03 3.46 0.24 18.8 0.30 - -
rPP/W60 32.5 0.40 4.77 0.04 4.28 0.03 0.86 0.09 16.0 0.15 - -
rPP/PB60 28.3 0.91 3.78 0.08 3.14 0.07 1.00 0.02 13.0 0.16 - -
rPP/W60/M 63.2 1.56 5.58 0.12 6.61 0.08 0.97 0.05 34.4 0.41 - -
rPP/PB60/M 55.2 1.05 5.00 0.08 4.63 0.09 1.28 0.02 28.1 0.22 - -
ABS - - 2.42 0.08 2.42 0.02 4.20 2.15 35.6 0.21 - -
rABS/W30 69.4 1.37 4.86 0.08 4.81 0.05 1.35 0.07 39.6 0.38 - -
rABS/PB30 64.4 1.11 4.66 0.08 4.64 0.07 1.27 0.07 36.4 0.32 - -
rABS/W60 77.8 2.15 8.37 0.16 7.88 0.10 0.75 0.04 43.8 1.06 - -
rABS/PB60 66.3 1.92 7.98 0.15 7.55 0.09 0.65 0.06 37.0 1.04 - -
rABS/W60/S 85.7 2.69 8.14 0.11 7.74 0.24 0.89 0.04 48.9 0.92 - -
rABS/PB60/S 78.8 3.62 8.24 0.12 7.64 0.08 0.77 0.04 43.5 0.48 - -
PS - - 2.14 0.02 2.15 0.02 12.4 5.92 18.2 0.46 - -
rPS/W30 44.2 0.79 4.60 0.06 4.50 0.04 1.08 0.03 21.2 0.11 - -
rPS/PB30 47.5 0.95 4.41 0.08 4.24 0.06 1.20 0.07 22.1 0.07 - -
rPS/W60 49.3 1.44 7.68 0.09 6.84 0.06 0.58 0.04 24.4 0.33 - -
rPS/PB60 45.6 1.00 7.39 0.13 6.31 0.09 0.54 0.04 21.4 0.06 - -
rPS/W60/S 58.3 1.38 7.53 0.16 6.92 0.08 0.73 0.03 29.4 0.23 - -
rPS/PB60/S 52.0 0.70 7.64 0.12 6.67 0.08 0.61 0.04 24.7 0.04 - -

6.2.3 Challenges of using secondary materials for WPC manufacturing

[Link] Waste wood sorting

Waste wood (mixed A II) was collected from a local waste wood supplier in Hamburg in October
2014. The waste wood was stored outside and crushed to a particle size of > 200 mm with a
hammer mill at the recycling site. The waste wood contained mostly transport pallets from

Discussion and synthesis 82

softwood, with a minor content of hard wood, residuals of metals (nails), glass, engineered wood
products and plastic particles. The moisture content was measured to be 33% at the laboratory.
The waste wood had to be dried for storage purposes and sorted from abrasive impurities. For
the WPC made of waste wood, the computerized hydraulic hot press was used instead of
extruder and injection moulding machinery to ensure that no undetected abrasive residuals
would damage the WPC processing technology and tools. In summary, considerable effort was
needed to prepare the crushed waste wood particles from > 200 mm grading size to their final
shape of approximately < 1 mm particle size.

As discussed earlier, this effort expressed in value adding costs and the likeliness of undetected
abrasive residues in the sorting process, brings to question the practicality of using secondary
wood materials for WPC. However, from physical and mechanical points of view, the secondary
wood materials are viable for WPC and achieve comparable results in stiffness as virgin Norway
spruce particles or comparable co-products thereof. This is likely because the softwood content
in the waste materials (A II) was high and it can be assumed it was high in particleboard as well.

[Link] Immiscibility of secondary plastic materials

From the perspective of WPC producers, a constant quality of secondary materials is crucial for a
safe resource supply in the long term. Therefore, a sample comparison of two secondary PP
“batches” was done by physical and mechanical characterization. Both secondary PP batches
were obtained from INTERSEROH Dienstleistungs GmbH, Germany, in June 2014 and June 2015.
As results show in Table 15, the properties were almost equal for both batches.

Table 15. Differences in physical and mechanical properties of secondary PP from

two batches

Secondary PP
received in year
Unit 2014 2015 Δ '14 to '15
Density g/cm³ 0.92 0.92 0%
Water absorption after 28 days % 0.00 0.00 0%
Flexural MOE GPa 1.10 1.07 -3%
Tensile MOE GPa 1.32 1.56 18%
Tensile strength MPa 22.42 22.14 -1%
Tensile elongation at break % 24.50 33.76 38%

Weiss (2016) mentioned that a constant quality of secondary plastics is only achievable by
compounding various batches of specific secondary plastics to achieve homogeneity, reduce the
immiscibility and resulting disadvantages thereof. The immiscibility could also be reduced or
eliminated by using additives according to Mantia et al. (1992), Goodship (2007), Waldman &

Discussion and synthesis 83

Paoli (1998), Kazemi-Najafi (2013). However, this would result in additional costs and worsen
additionally the environmental profile of the composites (see Section 6.3.1).

[Link] Hazardous inorganic content

Threshold values of hazardous substances need to be considered in accordance with the
DIN EN 71-3: Safety of toys (DIN EN 2002) with respect to the substitution of the identified
secondary materials in WPC decking. The standard is used for products made of particleboards,
which are used in domestic applications and in close contact to humans. In the case of closed-
loop recycling – secondary WEEE plastics are used in the same product category – threshold
values of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances(RoHS) Directive (EC 2011a) need to be
considered. The ABS and PS were derived from category 3 (IT and telecommunications
equipment) and mainly from category 5 (lighting equipment). A comprehensive overview of the
observed elements with respect to the threshold values in context of the application potentials is
provided in Table 16.

Table 16. Heavy metal analysis. Values in ppm. LOD… limit of detection. WW… post-
consumer waste wood (mixed A II), PB… post-industrial particleboard (A II)

Analysed materials Thresholds

Norway DIN EN
rHDPE rPP rPS rABS WW PB RoHS
Element spruce 71-3
As < LOD 1.17 0.20 0.30 < LOD < LOD 0.21 - 25
Cd 8.82 2.09 10.65 58.99 0.30 < LOD 0.26 100 75
Co 5.22 5.53 6.88 10.84 0.07 0.46 0.26 - -
Cr 9.28 5.26 4.53 7.05 0.21 1.94 3.57 1000 60
Cu 7.32 18.72 11.69 19.07 0.93 2.89 3.24 - -
Ni 0.47 0.77 5.74 10.92 0.24 0.76 0.95 - -
Pb 6.52 0.82 8.45 4.13 0.75 3.93 10.54 1000 90

Currently, it is prohibited to use Cd to give colour to PE, PP, and PS, as a pigment for lacquers
and paints, and as a stabilizer for packaging and cable/wire insulation according to the REACH
Regulation (EC 2006). Cd was found in all secondary plastics, with a high concentration in
secondary ABS for which Cd is not prohibited (EC 2006). Copper chrome arsenic (CCA), are no
longer allowed to be used in wood preservatives in Germany and Europe. Pb was historically
used as pigment for white coatings of doors and window frames which have been further
recycled to particleboards (BAV, 2012). The use of these pigments has been restricted since
2005 in Germany, so diffusion of Pb occurred. Diffusion of hazardous substances is regulated by
the KrWG (German Government 2012). It’s time related aspects is a significant shortcoming of
using secondary materials as many substances have not been declared as hazardous or where
not known to be so in the past. Riedel et al. (2014) reported as well on the presence of
hazardous materials in waste wood categories, where no hazardous materials should be
expected.

Discussion and synthesis 84

The analysis in this thesis was conducted as a screening analysis and had not the intention to be
complete. The results reflect only a small range of inorganic hazardous substances. For example,
the content of mercury is an important parameter for categorization of waste wood. Organic
hazardous content would be also of much interest, such as PVC residuals and polychlorinated
biphenyls. Further, an evaluation on human or animal health was not considered. The USEtox
model could be considered in the context of impacts on human health and freshwater ecotoxicity
(Hauschild et al. 2008; Laurent et al. 2011; Rosenbaum et al. 2008).

6.3 Ecological aspects of WPC

Addressing the overarching research questions:

(4) What is the difference of secondary vs. virgin materials in WPC based on LCA?
(5) What is the ecological preferable EoL pathway of the composites

6.3.1 Product stage

The supply chain of virgin HDPE can be identified as the main contributor to the environmental
parameters when comparing 1 kg WPC compound as a semi-finished product from alternative
materials. The higher the wood content (60%) was used in the virgin WPC matrix the better the
environmental profile. The WPC compound produced from secondary materials containing 60%
of mixed waste wood (A II) was the best alternative in context of linking environmental
parameters and tensile MoE performances. However, using the semi-finished compound further
for outdoor decking, the WPC becomes less durable with a higher wood content (Miller et al.
2015). This can be linked to the loss in mechanical properties (strength and stiffness) based on
water uptake and biological degradation in terms of fungal decay (Krause & Gellerich 2014).
Therefore, replacement of a complete WPC decking board would be needed what increases the
total environmental impacts along the lifecycle. Using secondary HDPE is therefore an ecological
important alternative to minimize the environmental parameters of WPC decking along its life
cycle. Up to now, only post-industrial plastics are allowed for German produced WPC decking to
receive the quality label of Qualitätsgemeinschaft Holzwerkstoffe e.V (Qualitätsgemeinschaft
Holzwerkstoffe e.V. 2016).

If WPC is derived from secondary materials, the energyel for compounding wood particles and
plastics mainly influenced the environmental parameters of the semi-finished WPC compounds.
The coupling agents MAPP and MAPE were crucial for achieving satisfying mechanical
properties in the polyolefins-WPC but were also one of the main contributors to the
environmental parameters of the semi-finished compounds considering the little content (3 w-
%) and the potential environmental impacts thereof. The literature review on LCA of WPC in
Section 2.3 and the LCIA of ECOLIFE® exhibited the use of additional additives, which may also

Discussion and synthesis 85

increase the potential environmental impacts resulting from WPC manufacturing (product
stage). Results of ABS- and PS-WPC showed that the physical and mechanical properties were
not significantly benefited from SMA as the coupling agent. This would lower the environmental
parameters of WPC from secondary WEEE plastics in comparison to the polyolefins-WPC at
much better physical and mechanical parameters as discussed in Section 6.2. Nevertheless,
secondary ABS showed a high Cd content (59 ppm) which is likely to remain constantly high, as
the REACH regulation does not specifically prohibit Cd for colorization of ABS. Using sorted, non-
colorized secondary ABS could be feasible solution to that problem, but better sorting results in
higher secondary material costs.

The energyel was an environmental hotspot of 1.82 m² ECOLIFE® as well, which is used for
compounding wood, plastic and the additives to WPC pellets (9.4 MJ/FU) and for the co-
extrusion processes (57 MJ/FU). In both product LCA studies, the energyel was modelled by a
generic LCA dataset reflecting the country-specific energyel grid mix. At first glance, using
energyel from renewable resources could improve the environmental profile. The viability of
utilization need to be studied in detail on a regional basis in context of land use competition,
indirect land use effects and biodiversity issues (Alexandratos & Bruinsma 2012; Lauri et al.
2014; Searchinger 2013; Searchinger et al. 2015) as well as logistics and storage challenges of
renewable energies (Brinker 2011).

The transport of raw and semi-finished materials from Germany to China was not influencing
the overall environmental parameters of ECOLIFE®, but specifically it was the environmental
hotspot in the supply chain of the specialized wood powder from industrial roundwood. Using
co-products from regional suppliers should be considered as an alternative. Co-products derived
from wood sawing or planing are not classified as waste, when generating revenues. A
sensitivity analysis in Table 17 exhibits the comparison of the LCIA for 1 kg of alternative wood
material sources. WPC based on wood co-products are very likely to result in same physical and
mechanical properties as specialized wood powder from industrial roundwood or the like. The
environmental burdens of processes generating co-products were allocated based on
economical values. The environmental parameters of secondary wood from mixed waste wood
(A II) and co-products were respectively considered to the environmental parameters of virgin
wood particles as the ecological reference.

Significant improvements in GWP, EP, AP, ADPE and ADPF can be achieved by substituting wood
co-products in WPC. Comparing co-products to waste wood, the savings in GWP, ADPE, and
POCP become less important whereas the regional environmental parameters EP and AP were
greatly affected.

Discussion and synthesis 86

Table 17. LCIA (cradle-to-gate) comparison of 1 kg wood particle (< 1 mm) acc. to
EN 16485; virgin wood particles from Norway spruce, co-products from sawmill
processes and secondary wood from mixed waste wood (A II). x… inside system
boundary

System
A1–A3
Wood boundary
particles
A1 A2 A3 GWP ODP EP AP POCP ADPE ADPF
from…
Norway spruce x x – 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Co-products x x x -61% –2 -12% -32% 0% -74% -56%
Waste wood *1 x x -79% -80% -71% -71% +3% -80% -81%
1
wood inherent properties only
2
not assessed due to inconsistent data for energy provision of nuclear energy in
upstream processes (Diederichs 2014)

The CML-IA (CML 2001, Apr. 2015) contains the abiotic depletion potential for non-fossil
resources (ADPE) expressed in antimony equivalents (kg Sb-eq.) and abiotic depletion potential
for fossil resources (ADPF) expressed in mega joule (MJ). Development of indicators expressing
resource efficiency is currently a hot topic in policymaking and in research (eurostat 2016;
Huysman et al. 2015). For example, Fritz (2014) studied existing indicators to develop an
evaluation of resource efficiency in terms of sustainable building assessments for which the LCA
results can be further transferred for evaluation purposes in the application context such as the
building context and certification schemes like the German “Sustainable and green building”
system DGNB. However, the ADPs are not (yet) reflected in the “Guideline for Sustainable
Building” (BMUB 2016).

6.3.2 Identification of an environmentally sound end-of-life treatment

Recycling of post-consumer WPC to yield secondary WPC material was ecologically beneficial
compared to incineration with energy recovery, based on the basket-of-benefits LCA
methodology. This was observed for all WPC formulations that determined further the NCV in
context of energy recovery potential and the provision of complementary energyth and energyel.

The environmental profile of WPC recycling was sensitive to the amount of virgin WPC in the
formula and thereof the virgin HDPE. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis was conducted with
higher virgin WPC content in the recycled WPC formula. If the share of virgin WPC in the
composite formula is increased to 50%, the environmental profile of WPC recycling almost
equals the incineration system in the environmental parameters GWP (-6%), AP (-6%) and
becomes even worse in EP (+7%), ADPF (+10%) and ADPE (+31%). As a result, if virgin WPC
material is needed or used in the secondary WPC formula the use of secondary plastics should
be considered.

Despite of the technically feasible recycling of WPC based on laboratory scale results (iVTH
2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Schirp & Hellmann 2013), a current challenge of recycling is the increasing

Discussion and synthesis 87

market share of composites. The German Waste Wood Directive (German Government, 2003)
regulates recycling of waste wood of composites with more than 50% wood. Quality-labelled
German WPC decking contain > 50% wood content and could be classified as waste wood in
accordance with AltholzV (German Government 2003). However, this act was released in 2003,
where WPC decking were either in an early market state and not considered as an engineered
wood product. Therefore, post-consumer WPC is often wrongly sorted as waste wood or WPC is
collected through bulky waste systems. In both ways, WPC is treated as a residual and
incinerated (EUWID 2015; Lampel 2015), which was found to be the least preferable EoL
treatment from an environmental point of view as discussed before.

Crucial for WPC recycling activities in context of a circular economy is an established market (EC
2008), characterized by demand and supply of the secondary material. This market exists to
some extent for post-consumer plastics and wood, but up until now not for post-consumer WPC.
Although some manufacturers claim to provide a take-back system for post-consumer WPC
decking, a google search resulted in only one result. In this case, the discarded WPC has to be
individually transported to the manufacturer who takes back the post-consumer WPC on a
voluntary basis (NATURinFORM 2016). A system wide take-back system for WPC is lacking so
that the most dominant disposal route of WPC is incineration in Germany and most probably
landfill in other European countries, where almost 50% of post-consumer plastics are still
landfilled on average (BIO et al. 2011; Plastics Europe 2015). The financial subsidies for using
secondary materials addressed in the “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe” (EC 2011b) will
therefore likely play an essential part for a viable bioeconomy in terms of a projected growing
market share of WPC products and a resulting amount of post-consumer WPC in our society.

Discussion and synthesis 88

7 Conclusions

Coniferous roundwood and wood co-products thereof are likely to become a vital resource in the
bioeconomy. This study examined the potential use of secondary wood as material substitution
in WPC. Material flow analysis showed post-consumer waste wood of category A II (mixed
category A II) and post-industrial particleboard (A II) to contain substitutable secondary wood
particles. Both secondary materials essentially consist of softwoods (spruce and pine) and their
use in WPC resulted in physical and mechanical properties comparable to WPC made of virgin
Norway spruce or co-products thereof. However, both secondary wood materials are likely to
contain abrasive materials, plastics and hazardous inorganic content, linked to insufficient
sorting and recycling techniques due to economic reasons. Abrasive materials can easily damage
WPC processing machinery and plastics may influence the processability of the polymer matrix.
There is no noticeable ecological advantage to using either virgin or secondary wood in WPC, as
both materials consume almost the same amount of energy to process into a workable particle
size.

Secondary thermoplastic polyolefins (HDPE, PP) from recycled post-consumer packaging waste
and WEEE (ABS, PS) are a practical alternative for WPC, especially for ecological and economic
reasons. These secondary materials are readily available on the recycling market as high quality
re-granulates, or at least have been sorted and recycled with accompanying data sheets.
Furthermore, plastic recyclers continue to search for new value-added applications. From a
technical perspective, secondary plastics present a feasible option for WPC due to their excellent
mechanical and physical performances. Though secondary ABS and PS are more expensive than
secondary polyolefins, WEEE-WPC do not necessarily need a coupling agent (SMA) and result in
much higher technical performance than polyolefins-WPC. This would reduce the total
production costs and benefit the environmental profile of the composites accordingly. The
challenges presented by using secondary materials, such as the presence of inorganic hazardous
substances in pigments or dark colour hues of WPC made from these secondary materials, could
be avoided by co-extrusion with an outer layer from virgin materials. An innovative window
system made of a co-extruded WPC window profile presented in the case study already uses
secondary HDPE that is wrapped in aluminium sheets. An alternative should be considered to
aluminium as its raw material supply chain causes significant environmental impacts. Future
studies, however, will need to examine the assessment of organic hazardous materials as well
and consider more LCA indicators with respect to resource efficiency.

Conclusions 89
Results from the “basket-of-benefits” LCA showed that recycling of WPC to yield secondary WPC
is the preferable EoL alternative compared to incineration with energy recovery in waste-to-
energy plants. In practice, WPC is an impurity either in waste wood recycling or in bulky waste
recycling due to a non-existing demand for secondary WPC material and, therefore, rejected as a
residual that is disposed in incineration plants. A vital take-back system for WPC is needed what
could be achieved by better implementation of policy concepts, such as the “polluter pays
principle”, the EPR and especially the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, which offer
great potentials to become a meaningful resource efficient bioeconomy.

Conclusions 90
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