Conditional Climate–Cost Trade-Offs and Transport Break-Even Conditions for Waste Flexible-Film Recycling Under Feedstock Quality Constraints

Feedstock quality and unequal process services complicate comparisons of waste flexible-film recycling routes. We linked records from 52 recyclers and 166 flows with 60 composition observations and separate polyethylene (PE) pelletization and mixed-feed (MIX) molding records. PE scenarios distinguished fixed feed from equal retained pellet output; MIX scenarios compared treatment of the same feed without assuming equivalent product function. Twelve PE batches yielded 38,226 kg of pellets from 40,796 kg of feed, with pooled electricity use of 439.8 kWh/t pellets. Industrial dry-cleaning electricity was treated as a threshold variable. At the MIX-06 reference setting, the covered climate impact of the extrusion reference exceeded molding by 23.5 kg CO2-eq/t feed; this difference ranged from −58.2 to 129.7 kg CO2-eq/t across engineering scenarios. Additional relative molding transport removed the climate and L2 cost margins at 150.5 and 34.0 km. L2 includes priced direct inputs, labor, maintenance and annualized equipment costs. Monthly throughput weighting yielded a candidate recorded flow interval of 2728.7–6605.2 t before deployment constraints. Route rankings depend on specified services, quality, capacity and feed supply. Unquantified services limit industrial interpretation, and unresolved resale links prevent interpreting regional endpoints as deduplicated physical savings.