Analysis of key environmental areas in the design and labelling of furniture products: Application of a screening approach based on a literature review of LCA studies

Abstract

Environmental impacts of production and consumption can be controlled and reduced through instruments such as ecodesign and environmental labelling, which typically involve the analysis of complex product systems. The definition of more sustainable product options is not a trivial task and it can be complicated by factors such as the technical complexity and heterogeneity of products, available literature and impact assessment metrics used. The principles of systematic review and meta-analyses have been used to tailor an approach that can be used, to support eco-design and environmental labelling, for screening the environmental literature of products and the preliminary analysis of key environmental areas and improvement options. The approach has been applied to the furniture product group, for which 82 documents related to environmental aspects for different furniture products were collected.The screening and analysis consisted of three steps: 1.selection of reference impact categories;2.screening of studies according to a qualitative–quantitative framework;3.analysis of selected studies and extraction of relevant information. Five impact categories have been analysed: Acidification, Climate Change, Eutrophication, Ozone Depletion, Photochemical Ozone Formation. Analysis of documents covering a broad group of furniture products has allowed the understanding of critical areas, improvement options and technical aspects on which to concentrate investigation efforts in order to reduce the life cycle impacts.The approach can, in general, be adapted to any products for addressing the further development and implementation of measures with which to promote more sustainable options (e.g., ecodesign, environmental labelling, green public procurement criteria).