Use of Optimization Tools for Decision-Making: Accounting for Externalities in the Production of Biobased Plastics

We would like to encourage the inclusion of externalities (environmental costs) within economic models specially when considering the use of biomass for the production of biobased plastics. Our research question is “How could academia/researchers promote the internalization of externalities such as environmental costs within economic/financial models used for decision-makers to deploy the production of bio-based plastics?”. The answer is not straightforward due to the complexity of the systems that we are evaluating (e.g., biomass supply logistics), but we need decision-support tools that can provide information on environmental impacts in economic optimization models in a future-oriented perspective