The PLEX database is an add-on to the ecoinvent APOS unit database that has the aim to quantify plastic littering along the supply chain. The first iteration was done by Ciroth & Kuoame (2019)[1] and the latest update came about in July 2023[2], for ecoinvent v3.9.1. Now in version 3, PLEX adds plastic littering to ecoinvent v3.10.
The documentation for PLEX v3 and log of changes can be found here: /wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PLEX-v3-update-summer-2024.pdf. A summary is found below.
Change log
The following changes and improvements were made in this version update:
1.1 Updated background database
The background data was updated to ecoinvent 3.10 APOS unit database in the background.
1.2 Flows with units “items” were improved
In comparison to the previous generic definition of mass per unit, this update counts with a more precise estimation of the mass of flows that have units as “number of items”.
1.3 Tyre, break and road wear now included as direct littering
Tyre, break and road wear flows in the output are direct emissions, and were previously not taken into account. For tyre wear, it is 95% plastic content being directly littered, for the others, it is 95% probability of littering but <100% plastic content. Wear in transportation processes is now taken into account by the database as direct litter.
Additionally, it was spotted that some transportation processes from ecoinvent didn’t have tyre wear. Tyre wear was therefore added for those passenger car, lorry, bus and scooter processes that didn’t have it.
Get PLEX v3 for openLCA
You can find this database in openLCA Nexus, our market place for LCA data: https://nexus.openlca.org/database/PLEX.
Note that a valid ecoinvent licence is required. Those users with the previous PLEX database version and purchased maintenance will also have access to the database update.
[1] Ciroth, A., Kouame, N.: Elementary litter in life cycle inventories, approach and application , presentation, LCM, Poznan, 2019.
[2] /wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PLEX_Plastic_litter_extension_for_ecoinvent.pdf