Sustainable strategies analysis through Life Cycle Assessment: a case study in a furniture industry

Abstract

This article aims to analyze sustainable strategies by assessing the environmental performance of a wardrobe built from medium density particleboard. For this, the Life cycle assessment technique was used. The product life cycle studied was a cradle-to-gate type, including three main stages: raw materials supply, wardrobe manufacturing and distribution of the wardrobe. The functional unit was 40 kg of stored goods/5 years and the reference flow was one wardrobe unit. The LCA modeling process was undertaken using the GaBi software, Professional 4.4 version based on attributional modeling and the EDIP-97 method. The life cycle assessment results indicated that the most significant environmental impacts occur at the stages of raw materials supply and the distribution of the wardrobe, and the most relevant impact categories were human toxicity, global warming and acidification, totaling 68.0% of the overall life cycle impacts. Based on this results and a literature review of life cycle assessment studies of furniture products, two sustainable strategies were presented: to optimize transport system and the use of alternatives raw materials during the manufacturing of medium density particleboard. In addition, three scenarios for the production of the medium density particleboard were analyzed with focus on using recycled wood as raw material instead of virgin wood. The results showed that use of 100% wood waste was more sustainable because there was a global minimization of potential impacts. These conclusions can assist furniture and the wood-based panel industries in improving their environmental profile and encourage research about alternative options to promote cleaner production of furniture components in a life cycle perspective.