Conveyor belts are widely used industrial composites whose end of life management remains environmentally and technically challenging, particularly because they contain poly(vinyl chloride), poly(ethylene terephthalate) and various additives. This study evaluates repairing, repurposing and two recycling routes and compares them with landfilling and incineration through mechanical testing and an attributional gate to grave life cycle assessment. Tensile and puncture tests show that conveyor belts outperform livestock mats by factors of 22.4 in tensile strength and 8.7 in puncture resistance, confirming their suitability for repurposing. The life cycle results indicate that no single option achieves the lowest impacts across all categories, but repurposing and improved recycling often present lower impacts than landfilling and incineration. For instance, repurposing followed by landfilling results in a global warming potential of minus 10.2 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per functional unit, while incineration reaches 1.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent. A consistent finding across all scenarios is the identification of the PET fraction as the dominant environmental hotspot. PET treatment drives climate change, particulate formation, toxicity and eutrophication impacts through emissions during incineration, degradation in landfills and electricity demand in recycling operations. The study also highlights limitations related to the lack of data on leaching, microplastic release and general end of life behavior of repurposed belts during use. Overall, the results demonstrate the mechanical viability and environmental promise of circular strategies that keep belts in use for longer, while emphasizing the need for further research to ensure their safe and scalable implementation.
Cataldo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.