Life cycle assessment of bamboo products: Review and harmonization

Abstract

Bamboo is considered a promising solution to mitigate climate change because of its carbon sequestration capability and versatile applications. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to evaluate the environmental performance of various bamboo products. This study compared the Global Warming Potential (GWP) values of bamboo products with those of the corresponding benchmark materials (e.g., steel, concrete, plastics) through a comprehensive literature review of relevant LCA studies. The results showed that bamboo products often lead to lower GWP values. In several other cases, we also observed significant variability in the comparison results due to a wide range of assumptions regarding bamboo cultivation, processing, product manufacturing, energy supply, and choices of the LCA database adopted by the reviewed studies. We analyzed the key modeling assumptions for each life cycle stage of bamboo products and established a harmonized inventory dataset to reduce the uncertainty in modeling the processed bamboo (as a raw material for subsequently manufacturing various products). Based on the harmonized dataset, we conducted a cradle-to-gate LCA and concluded that the major contributor to the overall GWP result was electricity consumption (and associated carbon intensity of energy generation) during bamboo processing. We also concluded that future research was needed to improve the transparency, consistency, and comprehensiveness of LCA studies on bamboo products.