Particula Group is a research and technology company from Croatia dedicated to the development of circular bioeconomy solutions. The company specializes in an integration of sustainable technological innovations into the business models and manufacturing processes with the goal of developing high quality end products with positive environmental and social impact. Our ambition is to develop green products portfolio by improving sustainability performance and minimizing the impact on the environment.
We develop and implement circular economy strategies and analysing the sustainability impact of new business solutions by estimating the lifetime environmental impact (Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)), the direct and indirect monetary cost (Life Cycle Costing (LCC)) and the social aspect of the product or service (Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA)), that complements the environmental LCA and economic LCC analyses.
Particula Group is leading the work package number five (WP5) where the main assignment is to assess the environmental, economic, social, safety, legislative and regulatory barriers for the implementation of MERLIN processes and products. We have two tasks: 1) technical implementation of LCA, LCC. SLCA and 2) leading work package WP5, while the safety and legal assessment will be done by lead partner ITENE and EuPC.
Instead of the current practices of producing, using and then disposing multilayer packaging materials and products, the ambition of MERLIN project is to transfer the current linear model to the circular economy model, changing the “old ways” of disposing and burning to reusing and recycling. Particula Group will evaluate and demonstrate through LCA, LCC and S-LCA whether indeed closing the loop for multilayer packaging materials and products is justifiable from the environmental, economic, and social point of view.
The preliminary approach for MERLIN project for conducting LCA, LCC and S-LCA has been established in three deliverable reports completed in November 2022. The goal and scope of the assessment have been defined, that includes the MERLIN product system’s description along with the baseline scenario, functional unit and reference flows, system boundary, allocation procedures and data collection strategy. Furthermore, with the support of stakeholders of MERLIN project, potentially relevant stakeholder categories, topics and indicators for the multilayer packaging value chain have been defined and selected. The data collection for impact assessment will begin as soon as the data from the first experiments in WP1-WP4 will become available. Relevant data for LCA, LCC and S-LCA will be collected gradually with more data being systematically added into the process by considering the technological advances in the project. The environmental, economic, and social flows will be compiled and analysed in the second half of the MERLIN project providing the final recommendations for the environmental, economic, and social improvements along the life cycle of the multilayer packaging closed-loop system.
