Mechanical recycling is often assumed, rather than demonstrated, to deliver a net environmental benefit relative to virgin plastic production, particularly in Sub-Saharan African contexts where primary process data are scarce. This study quantifies that benefit for food-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) produced at mid-scale in Cameroon, using the European Commission’s Circular Footprint Formula (CFF) applied to a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA; ISO 14040/14044) of the Opur and Supermont mineral-water bottle streams recycled at Ecogreen Sarl, Douala. Primary inventory data were obtained from a 90-day, three-shift production campaign combining calibrated mass, electricity and water metering; a parallel material flow analysis (MFA) established a mass-balance closure. The Environmental Footprint (EF) 3.1 method, implemented in openLCA with ecoinvent v3.10 background data, characterised the gate-to-gate process impact at 186 kg CO2-eq per tonne of food-grade rPET pellets. Applying the CFF converted this process impact into an effective, credit-adjusted climate-change footprint of approximately 1,600 kg CO2-eq per tonne, corresponding to an avoided impact of 27.2% relative to a linear baseline of virgin production plus landfilling. Comparable avoided impacts were obtained for acidification (28.4%), fossil resource use (29.8%) and particulate matter (27.0%), while human toxicity indicators showed a net increase (-5.8% for cancer effects, -21.2% for non-cancer effects) attributable to ancillary chemical and energy inputs. Freshwater eutrophication and ecotoxicity, driven by wastewater treatment, and climate change and fossil-resource depletion, driven by electricity and diesel-fuelled thermal energy, dominated the normalised impact profile. Material flow analysis identified oversized 10-litre bottles as the single largest documented loss pathway at the flake-production stage (8.3% of PET bottle feed), a design-process mismatch rather than a contamination problem. A ceteris-paribus parametric sensitivity analysis, holding the recycling-process impact, end-of-life recycling rate, allocation factor and quality ratios fixed, shows the CFF-derived climate benefit increasing monotonically with the input recycled-content rate above the 25% baseline; because this response is a mathematical property of the CFF equation rather than independently tested evidence of technical feasibility, it is presented as a policy-relevant scenario rather than a demonstrated ceiling. Uncertainty was propagated through 10,000 Monte-Carlo iterations for the recycling-process inventory. Subject to these caveats, the results indicate that the CFF, parameterised with primary process data, provides a policy-relevant quantification of circularity benefit even where recycling operates below the collection and technology standards of mature economies, and that recycled-content policy, alongside process-level efficiency improvement, remains an influential lever for improving the environmental return of food-grade PET recycling in Cameroon.
Mechanical recycling is often assumed, rather than demonstrated, to deliver a net environmental benefit relative to virgin plastic production, particularly in Sub-Saharan African contexts where primary process data are scarce. This study quantifies that benefit for food-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) produced at mid-scale in Cameroon, using the European Commission’s Circular Footprint Formula (CFF) applied to a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA; ISO 14040/14044) of the Opur and Supermont mineral-water bottle streams recycled at Ecogreen Sarl, Douala. Primary inventory data were obtained from a 90-day, three-shift production campaign combining calibrated mass, electricity and water metering; a parallel material flow analysis (MFA) established a mass-balance closure. The Environmental Footprint (EF) 3.1 method, implemented in openLCA with ecoinvent v3.10 background data, characterised the gate-to-gate process impact at 186 kg CO2-eq per tonne of food-grade rPET pellets. Applying the CFF converted this process impact into an effective, credit-adjusted climate-change footprint of approximately 1,600 kg CO2-eq per tonne, corresponding to an avoided impact of 27.2% relative to a linear baseline of virgin production plus landfilling. Comparable avoided impacts were obtained for acidification (28.4%), fossil resource use (29.8%) and particulate matter (27.0%), while human toxicity indicators showed a net increase (-5.8% for cancer effects, -21.2% for non-cancer effects) attributable to ancillary chemical and energy inputs. Freshwater eutrophication and ecotoxicity, driven by wastewater treatment, and climate change and fossil-resource depletion, driven by electricity and diesel-fuelled thermal energy, dominated the normalised impact profile. Material flow analysis identified oversized 10-litre bottles as the single largest documented loss pathway at the flake-production stage (8.3% of PET bottle feed), a design-process mismatch rather than a contamination problem. A ceteris-paribus parametric sensitivity analysis, holding the recycling-process impact, end-of-life recycling rate, allocation factor and quality ratios fixed, shows the CFF-derived climate benefit increasing monotonically with the input recycled-content rate above the 25% baseline; because this response is a mathematical property of the CFF equation rather than independently tested evidence of technical feasibility, it is presented as a policy-relevant scenario rather than a demonstrated ceiling. Uncertainty was propagated through 10,000 Monte-Carlo iterations for the recycling-process inventory. Subject to these caveats, the results indicate that the CFF, parameterised with primary process data, provides a policy-relevant quantification of circularity benefit even where recycling operates below the collection and technology standards of mature economies, and that recycled-content policy, alongside process-level efficiency improvement, remains an influential lever for improving the environmental return of food-grade PET recycling in Cameroon.