The missing link: A systematic review of microplastics and its neglected role in life-cycle assessment

Abstract

The issue of plastic pollution has been exacerbated by the discovery of small plastic particles known as “microplastic”. While the harmful effects of microplastics are becoming increasingly apparent, life-cycle assessment (LCA), as a holistic environmental assessment tool, has yet to offer a solution that can quantitatively capture the impacts associated with microplastics. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review to investigate how existing LCA studies quantify the environmental and human health effects of microplastics. A detailed analysis of 187 studies revealed that microplastics are rarely quantified, or even qualitatively discussed, in most LCAs. Thus, the true impacts of plastic products may be underrepresented and underestimated, leading to biased decision-making. We believe that this status quo is attributable to four fundamental issues, including (i) lack of microplastic leakage data; (ii) lack of quantitative cause-effect relationships between microplastic concentration and their impacts; (iii) exclusion of the “use” phase from the scope of analysis; and (iv) exclusion of long-term effects from landfilled plastic waste. These findings highlight the need for greater efforts and investment in microplastic research and data collection. To address the current knowledge gap, this article presents practical recommendations on how microplastics can be incorporated into the LCA framework, based on latest research. • Incorporating microplastics into LCA is challenging due to lack of inventory data. • LCA requires thorough risk assessment to develop characterisation factors. • The environmental impacts of microplastics are not often reported by LCAs. • LCAs often overlook long-term impacts of plastic waste. • Microplastic production during product usage commonly oversimplified.

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