Rebolledo Leiva, RicardoLadakis, DimitriosIoannidou, Sofia-MariaKoutinas, ApostolisMoreira Vilar, María TeresaGonzález García, Sara2023-11-092023-11-092023-08-07Journal of Cleaner Production 420 (2023) 1383540959-6526http://hdl.handle.net/10347/31247The climate crisis calls for a shift from petrochemicals to bio-based products to reduce environmental consequences. Polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most widely used biopolymers, due to its mechanical properties and renewable origin, to produce bio-based compostable plastic for food packaging. The objective of this study is to determine the environmental feasibility of a second-generation PLA production based on wheat straw; and the role of a chemical recycling plant on the environmental performance of a bioproduct at an early design stage. A holistic assessment was performed through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology considering both attributional and consequential perspectives, through a cradle-to-grave approach. The attributional LCA results show that lactic acid production was the main contributor due to the wheat straw pre-treatment and downstream separation and purification (DSP) processes. The integration of a recycling plant leads to a significant reduction of burdens, ranging from 1.38 to 0.44 kg CO2eq in the Global Warming category. Furthermore, consequential LCA results shows that the increased demand for substitute products for activities such as feeding, fertilisation and energy generation and the indirect emissions from land use change related to the conversion of land for the cultivation of raw materials are relevant factors in the environmental effects associated with the possible implementation of straw-based bioPLA production systemeng© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This article is available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license and permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedAtribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/LCAConsequential LCARecyclingBioplasticCircular economyBiorefineryjournal article10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138354open access