Abstract
A comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for the matchsticks industry in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan to quantify environmental footprint, water footprint, cumulative energy use, and to identify improvement opportunities in the matchsticks manufacturing process. One carton of matchsticks was used as reference unit for this study. Foreground data was collected from the matchsticks industry through questionnaire surveys, personal meetings, and field measurements. The collected data was transformed into potential environmental impacts through the Centre for Environment Studies (CML) 2000 v.2.05 method present by default in the SimaPro v.9.1 software. Water footprint was calculated using methodology developed by Hoekstra et al., 2012 (water scarcity index) V1.02 and cumulative energy demand by SimaPro v.9.1 software. The results showed that transport of primary material (wood logs), sawn wood for matchsticks, red phosphorous, acrylic varnish, and kerosene fuel oil contributed to the overall environmental impacts. Transport of primary materials and sawn timber for matchsticks contributed significantly to abiotic depletion, global warming, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion, corrosion, human toxicity, and aquatic ecotoxicity effects. The total water footprint for manufacturing one carton of matchsticks was 0.265332 m3, whereas the total cumulative energy demand was 715.860 Mega Joules (MJ), mainly sourced from non-renewable fossil fuels (708.979 MJ). Scenario analysis was also conducted for 20% and 30% reduction in the primary material distance covered by trucks and revealed that reducing direct material transport distances could diminish environmental impacts and energy consumption. Therefore, environmental footprint could be minimized through diverting matchsticks industries freight from indigenous routes to high mobility highways and by promoting industrial forestry close to industrial zones in Pakistan. Many industries did not have emissions control systems, exceeding the permissible limit for emissions established by the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) of Pakistan. Thus, installation of emissions control system could also diminish emissions from match industry in Pakistan.
Highlights
Matchsticks are generally produced from small wooden sticks or stiff paper [1]
The results showed that transport of primary material, sawn wood for matchsticks, red phosphorous, acrylic varnish, and kerosene fuel oil contributed to the overall environmental impacts
This study presented the environmental impacts, water footprint and cumulative energy demand from resource inputs and outputs such as primary materials transport, sawn wood for a match, red phosphorous, printing ink, dry paint, acrylic varnish, cobalt, and kerosene oil for one carton match produced in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan
Summary
Matchsticks are generally produced from small wooden sticks or stiff paper [1]. One end of the matchsticks is coated with crude material ignited by frictional heat brought about by rubbing the matchsticks’ coated end against the matchsticks box’s contrary side [2]. The matchsticks’ coated end is known as the matchsticks head and comprises a binder and chemicals. Safety matchsticks can rub with any appropriately frictional surface [3]. Raw materials used in the manufacture of safety matchsticks include softwoods, paper boxes, and chemicals for the matchstick’s heads and rubbing the packages’ side includes splints, veneers, wax, chlorate, sulfur, bichromate of potassium, resin, gums, glass powder, glue, phosphorous, kerosene oil, linseed oil, ammonium phosphate, potassium chlorate [4]. Safety matchsticks are one of the oldest wood-based industries globally. Smokers used safety matchsticks to ignite cigarettes, hookas, and beedies in Pakistan [5], whereas matchsticks are used in different religious ceremonies and worship places such as mosques, churches and temples [6]
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