Beta Scorecards for Plastic Materials
This section includes scorecard assessments of four generic plastic materials:
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) (.pdf)
The graphic below illustrates a simplified version of the Scorecard assessments of the four plastics.
It is important to note that these are draft assessments, since they are based on a beta version of the Scorecard and are likely to change with the finalization of v.1.0. These assessments reveal that final assessments will depend on specific real world data that will vary with the final product. The key attributes affecting the beta scorecards of plastic materials are:
- for fossil fuel plastics, post-consumer recycled (PCR) content, additives and catalysts and
- for biobased plastics, pesticide use, genetically modified organism (GMO) use in the field, sustainable agriculture practices and compostability (if a single use product).
The assessments also reveal that for a plastic like PET, the catalyst used overwhelms any PCR content the plastic may have. This points to both a flaw in the grading system that will need to be addressed in the finalization of version 1.0 as well as the need for greener catalysts.
* = Maximum attainable grade
*1 = Maximum attainable grade if grown with atrazine or GMOs
*2 = Maximum attainable grade if grown without atrazine and GMOs
