To inform the foreground system of the conditions in the Nordics the following statistics were used.

The final treatment of both plastic and paper packaging is modelled as in the statistics below. The R2 value (recycling output rate) describes the output of the recycling process. For the used statistics of plastics (Recycling rates of packaging waste for monitoring compliance with policy targets, by type of packaging) this is in line with what the statistics describe: “Recycling rate of plastic packaging waste counts exclusively material that is recycled back into plastic (material recycling / generation)”. For paper packaging the applied “recycling” rate describes the input to the recycling process, which is then treated according to the dataset with a respective output of secondary material (considering fibre loss).

As landfilling of both plastic and paper is not common for waste generated in the studied Nordic it was decided with the steering committee that the remaining material is modelled as energy recovery, even if the Eurostat statistics do not show clear on the R3 value.

Table 28 Share of end-of-life treatments for the four studied countries for plastic packaging (Eurostat, 2023).

Table 29 Share of end-of-life treatments for the four studied countries for paper packaging (Eurostat, 2023).

The production of the packaging solutions are modelled for European geography such that available European electricity mixes were used in the production processes. However, in the EoL the avoided energy production from energy recovery was modelled for the Nordic geography, using the energy production in the studied countries to inform the shares. Further the European waste incineration datasets present a share of replaced energy production not representative for Nordic conditions in which the energy output is rather optimised for heat production than electricity production. Thus, the produced energy was summed up and redistributed according to Nordic conditions, such that 86% of the exported energy is heat and 14% of the exported energy is electricity.

These statistics were identical for Danmark and Sweden during 2022 and thus judged to be reliable, see for more detail https://www.vestfor.dk/fjernvarme/hvad-er-fjernvarme/ and https://www.avfallsverige.se/media/whafyutn/svensk_avfallshantering_2022.pdf. The redistribution method is judged to be conservative as heat production is by trend more efficient than electricity production, such that the exported energy may be higher if more heat is exported. This assumption was applied uniformly over all case studies.

The electricity mix for the studied region is modelled with the shares presented in Table 30. The electricity was modelled with the respective “market for electricity, medium voltage” dataset for the four countries (Ecoinvent 3.9.1).

Table 30 Electricity mix, Nordics. Share of the electricity production of the studied countries (reference year 2022) (IEA, 2023).

The heat mix for the studied region is modelled according to the statistics presented Table 31. The respective shares of displaced heat, i.e., heat production without waste incineration are presented in the section below with the dataset selection. For the modelling only the energy sources with more than 1% share are modelled. The shares of the remaining energy sources are adjusted accordingly.

Table 31 Heat mix, Nordics. Heat production of the studied countries, share of avoided heat production and da-taset collection (reference year 2022) (IEA, 2023).