Toward the sustainable use of conveyor belts: life cycle assessment of end-of-life options

Although conveyor belts play a crucial role in modern life (“If it’s made, it’s conveyed”) their relevance and even existence are largely overlooked. Whilst many belts have a simple construction based on rubber or polyurethane, others have a multilayer composition based on polyvinylchloride laminated over poly(ethylene terephthalate) mesh: a construction which precludes existing recycling infrastructures. Since all belts ultimately fail irreparably, they are currently consigned to landfill, which is among the least favoured options in the so-called hierarchy of waste disposal options, since this has a high environmental impact. This study focuses on the end-of-life scenarios: landfill; incineration, and incineration with energy capture in order to assess the potential environmental benefits which may accrue from these alternative end-of-life strategies. Of the three scenarios, landfill had greatest impact on indicators related to water quality whilst incineration had greater impact on air quality indicators and water consumption. The analysis revealed that overall, landfill tended to have less impact than incineration, but when energy recovery was applied, the impacts were greatly reduced and this last method would be the best option of the three considered.