A sustainability assessment of the foundry production process in Italy

Abstract

Sustainability has become an essential goal for companies to preserve their competitiveness; the metal cast industry is facing several challenges due stringent environmental regulations, resulting in sustainability performance issues. The evaluation of the cast iron environmental footprint has become a key point to drive the sector towards a more sustainable future.This study investigates the environmental performance of the cast iron manufactured by ten Italian foundries (named from A to J) by quantifying their product environmental footprint through the Life cycle assessment methodology. The scores of the surveyed foundries were compared with a benchmark value, that is representative of the average product manufactured by the Italian plants.The product environmental footprint of the casts of seven out of the ten surveyed plants is lower than the benchmark one. Raw materials acquisition is the most impacting in all sites; its contribution to the total product environmental footprint ranges from 59 % (foundry J) to 94 % (foundry D). Raw materials acquisition is followed by melting. The raw materials contributing more to the cast iron environmental footprint are pig iron and ferroalloys, together with electricity. The three elements on average accounts for the 60 % of the score of the casts of the surveyed plants.In all the considered plants climate change, particulate matter, resource, fossil fuels use and ecotoxicity are the most critical impact categories accounting for at least 70 % of the environmental footprint.The reduction of the cast iron environmental footprint is challenging because it requires to intervene on a well consolidated production process without altering the product quality. However, the substitution of pig iron and ferroalloys with recycled inputs, although not easy to achieve could be effective to enhance the sector sustainability since it would reduce the scores associated with the climate change, resource use and ecotoxicity impact categories.