Existing Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

Accounting for product recovery potential in building life cycle assessments: a disassembly network-based approach

Abstract Purpose Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) methods for buildings often overlook the benefits of product recovery potential, whether for future reuse or repurposing. This oversight arises from the limited scope of such methods, which often ignore the complex interdependencies between building products. The present paper, backed by its supplementary Python library, introduces a method that addresses this gap, emphasizing the influence of product interdependencies and future recovery potential on environmental impact. Methods Implementing the proposed method requires adding a phase, the recovery potential assessment, to the four phases that constitute an LCA according to the ISO 14040/14044 guidelines. Given the disassembly sequence for each product, in the first step of the recovery potential assessment, a disassembly network (DN) is created that displays structural and accessibility dependencies. By calculating the average of the disassembly potential (DP) of each structural dependency (second step) associated with that product, we obtain the DP (0.1–1) at the product level in a third step. Because there is no empirical data available to support a specific relationship between product disassembly potential and recovery potential (RP) (0–1), we employ, in a fourth step, a flexible model specification to represent scenarios of how this relationship may look like. Ultimately, for each scenario, the resulting RP is used to enable a probabilistic material flow analysis with a binary outcome, whether to be recovered or not. The resulting product-level median material flows are then used to quantify the building’s environmental impact for a given impact category in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The results are interpreted through an uncertainty, hotspot, and sensitivity analysis. Results and discussion Our results show that not considering the interdependencies between building products in building LCAs results in underestimating the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 28.29%. This discrepancy is primarily attributed to a failure to account for additional material flows stemming from secondary replacements owing to the interdependencies during the life cycle. When accounting for end-of-life recovery benefits, a zero-energy building (ZEB) design incorporating some DfD principles demonstrated up to 45.94% lower embodied GHG emissions than the ZEB design with low disassembly potential when assuming that recovered products will be reused. Conclusions Our approach provides first-of-a-kind evidence that not accounting for recovery potential may significantly distort the results of an LCA for buildings. The method and its supporting code support the semi-automated calculation of the otherwise neglected potential environmental impact, thus helping to drive the transition towards a more sustainable built environment. The supporting code allows researchers to build on the proposed framework if more data on the relationship between DP and RP become available in the future. Finally, while applied to buildings in this paper, the proposed framework is adaptable to any complex product with limited modifications in the supporting code.

Establishing the effectiveness of life cycle assessment to assess the environmental impact of passenger cars using biofuels: A Review

Predictions and decisions made by legislators may be partially or wholly informed by the results of life cycle assessment studies, but the outcomes can vary significantly. This review seeks to establish whether existing life cycle assessment study results are accurate and if there are errors or deficiencies in life cycle inventory databases, chosen methodologies, or choice of life cycle assessment tool that may impact the outcome of life cycle assessment studies. The context of the work is set against the role bioethanol/gasoline blends might play in reducing the environmental impact of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. The findings indicate inaccuracies exist and that there are various reasons for this. The accuracy of life cycle assessment results is affected by differences and inconsistencies that occur between life cycle inventory databases, the choice of life cycle inventory databases and life cycle assessment tools and because, in many cases, life cycle assessment methodology does not specify whether the biofuel content in the fuel is considered. The increase in the average age of biofuel-compatible passenger cars challenges the validity of results obtained by employing the commonly used approach based on fixed annual mileage profiles and lifetime activity. Uncertainty is a significant factor, and more attention should be paid to uncertainty analysis. Evidence shows the use of biofuels can deliver considerable environmental gains and reductions in CO2, especially in blends containing a higher percentage of biofuel.

A design process model for battery systems based on existing life cycle assessment results

A critical issue that has dominated the field of Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) is their usefulness to climate change, their second life, and their recyclability. With recent developments in the discipline of circular economy, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of LIBs becomes important. There are numerous studies on LCA of LIBs and this paper investigates the existing LCA results to quantify the different parameters that could affect the decisions of a battery pack design engineer. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP) are the two most discussed environmental impacts among the previously executed LCA studies. GWP gives information on the carbon footprint associated with the usage of LIB whereas the ADP is associated with the depletion of resources, both environmental factors important to consider for a sustainable design process. This study also takes into account the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) component, which provides a designer with a sense of the amount of energy used over the course of a LIB's lifetime. The authors of this work suggest a design process model for a LIB pack design based on these considerations, which aids a design engineer in making the right choices. Consequently, this helps the designer to achieve more utility of raw materials, making sparing use of resources and find potentials to reduce waste in different life stages of a LIB pack.

Prioritized utilisation and reprocessing of reusable equipment in anaesthesiology deparmtents : Recommendations on how to reduce CO2 emissions from anaesthetic equipment

Currently, few robust data are available to provide estimates of the environmental footprint and in particular the CO2 emissions of medical devices; however, existing life cycle assessments largely indicate that reusable materials have more favorable emissions and environmental footprints compared to disposable items. Thus, the challenge for every anesthesiology department is to identify items that can be used as reusable products for ecological and other reasons.Aprerequisite for the use of reusable items is hygienically correct reprocessing and packaging. Here, adistinction must be made between noncritical, semicritical and critical medical devices, depending on the type of use. In addition, adistinction must be made between categories A-C, depending on the complexity of the reprocessing.In this narrative review article common reusable items used in anesthesiology are categorized and astandardized decision algorithm for reprocessing routes is proposed. Special attention is also given to the packaging of medical devices, which can contribute to the ecological footprint to arelevant extent.This article further explains the framework under which reprocessing can take place and analyzes the current state of knowledge on the life cycle assessment of reprocessing reusable devices.This requires the special commitment of clinically active anesthesiologists to include ecological aspects in the decision to use disposable or reusable items. In the medium term, comprehensible ecological key numbers should be provided on every medical device to make the ecological costs of the articles understandable in addition to the monetary costs.

Improving the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of transport infrastructure assets – a case study in Brussels, Belgium

Infrastructure transportation assets represent a significant share of environmental effects associated with built stocks. Although there is a growing body of knowledge on the life cycle assessment of buildings and material flow analysis of building stocks, infrastructure assets have received less attention. Existing life cycle assessment studies tend to rely on process analysis which is known to underestimate embodied environmental flows. The aim of this paper is to introduce a bottom-up parametric model for infrastructure transport assets, which can support a detailed characterization of the stock in a consistent and transparent manner. It relies on comprehensive hybrid exchange data for the quantification. This paper establishes the approach and equations used in the proposed model. The model consists of four main steps, namely: developing parametric representations of transport infrastructure assets, quantifying their material stock and replacement-related flows, quantifying life cycle embodied environmental flows and visualizing the results. One pilot case study of a road (including pedestrian sidewalks and bike lanes) and light railway, is used to demonstrate the model. Results assessing this pilot case study over 60 years are presented, including the material stock and replacement flows, as well as life cycle embodied greenhouse gas emissions (LCEGHG). Together these results provide important insights into material/infrastructure asset hotspots assets (e.g. steel lighting posts). Emissions-intensive material products and assets have a notable impact on results of LCEGHG, and they dominate both Initial greenhouse gas emissions (IEGHG) and recurrent greenhouse gas emissions (REGHG). However, they contribute marginally to the total mass. Another important observation is the significance of REGHG representing ~30% of LCEGHG. Interestingly, steel, asphalt and concrete are the main contributors to both REGHG and IEGHG. Future research consists of automating the proposed model and packaging it as a python-based Rhinoceros Grasshopper plugin before conducting testing and verification.

Regionalized life cycle assessment of present and future lithium production for Li-ion batteries

While many different lithium carbonate production routes have been developed, existing life cycle assessments (LCA) of lithium carbonate production from brines are mainly based on a single brine operation site. Hence, current life cycle inventories do not capture the variability of brine sites and misestimate life cycle impacts. This study presents a systematic approach for LCA of existing and future lithium carbonate production from brines, which can furthermore be applied to geothermal brines or seawater. It has been used to model life cycle inventories of three existing and two upcoming brine operations in Argentina, Chile, and China, and is combined with regionalized life cycle impact assessment. Impacts on climate change, particulate matter human health impacts, and water scarcity from lithium carbonate production differ substantially among sites. Existing life cycle inventories for lithium-ion battery production underestimate climate change impacts by up to 19% compared to one from our study.

Formic Acid to Power towards Low‐Carbon Economy

AbstractThe storage and utilization of low‐carbon electricity and decarbonization of transportation are essential components for the future energy transition into a low‐carbon economy. While hydrogen has been identified as a potential energy carrier, the lack of viable technologies for safe and efficient storage and transportation of H2 greatly limits its applications and deployment at scale. Formic acid (FA) is considered one of the promising H2 energy carriers because of its high volumetric H2 storage capacity of 53 g H2/L, and relatively low toxicity and flammability for convenient and low‐cost storage and transportation. FA can be employed to generate electricity either in direct FA fuel cells (FCs) or indirectly as an H2 source for hydrogen FCs. FA can enable large‐scale chemical H2 storage to eliminate energy‐intensive and expensive processes for H2 liquefaction and compression and thus to achieve higher efficiency and broader utilization. This perspective summarizes recent advances in catalyst development for selective dehydrogenation of FA and high‐pressure H2 production. The advantages and limitations of FA‐to‐power options are highlighted. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis studies are reviewed to discuss the feasibility and future potential of FA as a fuel.

Circular Economy in Wastewater Management—The Potential of Source-Separating Sanitation in Rural and Peri-Urban Areas of Northern Finland and Sweden

Current practices in wastewater management lead to inefficient recovery and reuse of nutrients and can result in environmental problems. Source separation systems have been shown to be an efficient way of recovering nutrients and energy from wastewaters, both in rural and urban context. Studies on nutrient recovery potential and life cycle impacts of source separation systems are mainly limited to small systems (for example a few households) while the impacts of upscaling source separation to a regional level have hardly been studied, especially in sparsely populated areas where the cost of the connection to a main treatment plant is higher. This study examines the regional nutrient balance of two source separation scenarios—black water separation and urine diversion—and compares them to the existing conventional wastewater system. The analysis comprises three sparsely populated regions of northern Finland and Sweden, including rural, peri-urban and urban areas. In addition, climate impacts are assessed based on existing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. According to the results, by source separation it is possible to achieve a significant increase in the recovery rate of phosphorus (41–81%) and nitrogen (689–864%) compared to the conventional system. Depending on the region up to 65% of the mineral phosphorus and 60% of mineral nitrogen fertilisers could be theoretically replaced. Furthermore, the climate and eutrophication impacts would decrease with the implementation of such systems, but an increase in acidification may occur. However, even if the benefits of source separation systems are undisputed in terms of nutrient recovery, the implementation of such systems would to a large extent require an entire system change of the wastewater treatment sector and a wide paradigm change towards a circular economy.

A Supervised Machine Learning Classification Framework for Clothing Products’ Sustainability

These days, many sustainability-minded consumers face a major problem when trying to identify environmentally sustainable products. Indeed, there are a variety of confusing sustainability certifications and few labels capturing the overall environmental impact of products, as the existing procedures for assessing the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle are time consuming, costly, and require a lot of data and input from domain experts. This paper explores the use of supervised machine learning tools to extrapolate the results of existing life cycle assessment studies (LCAs) and to develop a model—applied to the clothing product category—that could easily and quickly assess the products’ environmental sustainability throughout their life cycle. More precisely, we assemble a dataset of clothing products with their life cycle characteristics and corresponding known total environmental impact and test, on a 5-fold cross-validation basis, nine state-of-the-art supervised machine learning algorithms. Among them, the random forest algorithm has the best performance with an average accuracy of 91% over the five folds. The resulting model provides rapid environmental feedback on a variety of clothing products with the limited data available to online retailers. It could be used to quickly provide interested consumers with product-level sustainability information, or even to develop a unique and all-inclusive environmental label.

Methodology for a combined uncertainty analysis and data quality rating of existing graphite datasets in context of battery LCAs

Battery raw materials have been identified as one of the main contributors to the overall environmental impact of batteries, however the primary data related to their production remains scarce and is subjected to high uncertainty. In particular, the commercial life cycle inventory datasets related to refining and processing of graphite as an anode material for lithium ion batteries are subjected to in-transparency and are difficult to be traced back. The existing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on traction batteries make use of these old and partly incomplete graphite datasets without consideration of underlying uncertainties and their effects on the overall environmental impacts. This paper addresses this issue by providing a comprehensive overview of the conventional graphite production processes, a summary of existing graphite datasets, along with their sources and presenting the underlying reasons for the major deviations. Subsequently, the quality of nine different Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) graphite datasets is discussed based on evaluation performed according to EPA data quality guidelines, whereby data gaps are identified and datasets are ranked according to an established data quality rating (DQR) methodology. Furthermore, the paper provides a common base for LCA results of existing graphite production datasets which were remodeled and assessed in Brightway2 (BW2) using background data from a ecoinvent. The results of DQR and LCA reveal major discrepancies in the datasets for the production of battery grade graphite. A Monte Carlo (MC) analysis is also provided to identify uncertainties stemming from technospheric flows, generating result bandwidths. A subsequent case study on state of the art lithium ion battery cell is also presented revealing that the choice of a certain graphite dataset could have a significant impact on the overall LCA results of a battery. The study highlights the need of the graphite datasets to receive more attention in the future.

The EPiC database: Hybrid embodied environmental flow coefficients for construction materials

Demand for new buildings and infrastructure continues to grow and will only increase in coming years to cater for forecast growth in global population. This demand will result in considerable strain on the natural environment, resulting from the operation of these new built assets as well as the demand for resources required to construct and maintain them. Life cycle assessment is a tool that can be used during the design or refurbishment of new or existing buildings or infrastructure projects, to assess and improve their environmental performance. A life cycle assessment is often time consuming and complex, especially when used for the analysis of entire construction projects. This is particularly true when it is used to analyse construction-related, or embodied, environmental flows (e.g. embodied greenhouse gas emissions). To simplify the process, especially with projects that have tight time or budget constraints, product-based environmental flow coefficients are often used, which provide an indication of the environmental flows associated with specific construction materials. However, existing coefficients are typically based on process data, inherent with truncated product system boundaries. This paper introduces the Environmental Performance in Construction (EPiC) Database, a comprehensive database of hybrid embodied environmental flow coefficients for construction materials in Australia. EPiC uses a hybrid life cycle inventory approach to fill the gaps that exist in process data and provide embodied environmental flow coefficients that are systemically complete. This study has shown that existing process data for materials is on average 55% incomplete, but considerable inconsistency in system boundary coverage means that this incompleteness varies from 2% to 99% across materials and environmental flows. Other key strengths of EPiC are its transparency, providing open access to all data, and methodological consistency, with coefficient data sources and methods being the same for all materials. Environmental flow coefficients from EPiC can be used on their own or integrated into existing life cycle assessment tools, informing improvements to the environmental performance of construction projects.

Embodied GHG Emissions of Wooden Buildings—Challenges of Biogenic Carbon Accounting in Current LCA Methods

Buildings play a vital role in reaching the targets stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Increasing the use of wood in construction is a proposed upcoming strategy to reduce the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of buildings. This study examines existing life cycle assessments of wooden buildings. The aim is to investigate embodied greenhouse gas emission results reported, as well as methodological approaches applied in existing literature. The study applies the protocol for Systematic Literature Reviews and finds 79 relevant papers. From the final sample, the study analyses 226 different scenarios in-depth in terms of embodied emissions, life cycle assessment method, life cycle inventory modelling and biogenic carbon approach. The analysis shows that the average reported values of embodied greenhouse gas emissions of wooden buildings are one-third to half of the embodied emissions reported from buildings in general. Additionally, from the analysis of the final sample we find that the majority of wooden building life cycle assessments apply similar methods and often leave out biogenic carbon from the assessment or simply do not declare it. This implies that the focus on variability in the different methods applied in wooden building life cycle assessments needs to be increased to establish the relationship between methodological choices and embodied emissions of wooden buildings. Further, transparency and conformity in biogenic carbon accounting in life cycle assessments is essential to enhance comparability between life cycle assessment studies and to avoid distortions in embodied GHG emission results.

Development of Roughness Prediction Models for Life Cycle Assessment Studies of Recycled Pavement Projects

The few existing life cycle assessment studies considering pavement recycling techniques usually omit the stages of maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) and use. The reason for this omission is the lack of information about how the pavement’s performance evolves over time and absence of methods to determine the M&R frequency and service life for completed projects. As a result, the deterioration of pavement recycling projects in the long term is not clearly understood. Few projects have available data, the majority of which are on low volume primary and secondary roads. This paper describes an approach to develop a family of roughness models for recycling projects in Colorado using functional data analysis, and individual models for selected projects in Virginia to support ongoing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. In the case of Colorado, full depth reclamation (FDR) projects will most likely deteriorate following an average group rate of 1.4 in./mi/year, with an initial international roughness index (IRI) between 52 and 70 in./mi. For the individual roughness models developed for Virginia projects, the initial IRI values and the rate of change for the treatments analyzed were found to range between 49 and 107 in./mi and between 0.7 and 5.2 in./mi/year, respectively, depending on the recycling method and type of stabilization treatment. The results of an LCA case study show that, in addition to recycling, Virginia Department of Transportation can achieve statewide emission reduction goals if focus is placed on achieving smoother roads while measures are taken to keep the annual rates of deterioration low.

The Life Cycle Assessment for Polylactic Acid (PLA) to Make It a Low-Carbon Material.

The massive plastic production worldwide leads to a global concern for the pollution made by the plastic wastes and the environmental issues associated with them. One of the best solutions is replacing the fossil-based plastics with bioplastics. Bioplastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) are biodegradable materials with less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. PLA is a biopolymer produced from natural resources with good mechanical and chemical properties, therefore, it is used widely in packaging, agriculture, and biomedical industries. PLA products mostly end up in landfills or composting. In this review paper, the existing life cycle assessments (LCA) for PLA were comprehensively reviewed and classified. According to the LCAs, the energy and materials used in the whole life cycle of PLA were reported. Finally, the GHG emissions of PLA in each stage of its life cycle, including feedstock acquisition and conversion, manufacturing of PLA products, the PLA applications, and the end of life (EoL) options, were described. The most energy-intensive stage in the life cycle of PLA is its conversion. By optimizing the conversion process of PLA, it is possible to make it a low-carbon material with less dependence on energy sources.

Assessing the Environmental Performance of Municipal Solid Waste Collection: A New Predictive LCA Model

Most existing life cycle assessment models of waste management have so far underplayed the importance of the waste collection phase, addressing it only in a simplified fashion, either by requesting the total amount of fuel used as a direct user input or by calculating it based on a set of input parameters and fixed diesel consumption factors. However, if the main purpose of the study is to improve the efficiency of the collection system itself, a more detailed analysis of the collection phase is required, avoiding oversimplified and potentially misleading conclusions. The new LCA collection model presented here relies on a large number of parameters (number and type of containers, collection frequency, distances for the various legs of transport, etc.) and allows the detailed predictive analysis of alternative collection scenarios. The results of applying this newly developed model to a number of experimental case studies in Portugal are analyzed, discussed, and compared to those produced by a selection of pre-existing, more simplified models such as ORWARE and MSW-DST. The new model is confirmed as being the most accurate and, importantly, as the only one capable of predicting the consequences of a range of possible changes in the collection parameters.

Environmental impacts of functional fillers in polylactide (PLA)-based bottles using life cycle assessment methodology

The use of functional fillers added to PLA-based products can be beneficial in terms of cost reduction and properties improvement. The existing life cycle assessment of PLA containers mainly focuses on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of PLA material model without fillers, and overlooked environmental impacts of functional fillers and the significant environmental problem-shifting on other indicators. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of cooking oil bottles made from PLA, PLA/Fibers and PLA/CaCO3 considering a wide spectrum impacts, and compares the environmental profile of them based on normalization and weighting analysis. The functional unit was set at 1000 bottles of 900 mL. The system boundary is from cradle to gate, including PLA-based particles production, bottle processing and transportation. The results showed that the contribution of the primary energy demand (PED) index of PLA-based bottles accounted for 159% to 192% of the global warming potential (GWP) index, which may be overlooked in previous studies. Compared to PLA and PLA/Fibers bottles, PLA/CaCO3 bottles have lower environmental impacts in most categories and the lowest integrated impact index. In terms of PLA/CaCO3 bottles, PLA particles and electricity contributed the most to energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) results, accounting for 63.09% and 28.26% to the integrated impacts index, respectively. The results imply that the use of fillers in PLA bottles tends to reduce the environmental impacts, especially calcium carbonate can efficiently minimize environmental impacts of PLA-based bottles. And PED, SO2 and NOX indicators ranking above CO2 should be taken into consideration to avoid the environmental problem-shifting, which can provide valuable reference for the creation of the method of making biodegradable plastic and carbon neutral policies.

Plastic Waste Management: A Review of Existing Life Cycle Assessment Studies

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that can help to quantify the impacts of different processes to facilitate comparison and decision making. There are many potential methods for managing plastic waste, but it can be difficult to determine which methods are preferable in terms of environmental impact. Suitable existing LCA studies are identified through a screening process and the methodologies used and their outputs are compared. When undertaking an LCA, the researchers must define their scope and select their parameters, according to their aims and context, which leads to a wide variation in the approach taken. In this study, six parameters have been considered to analyze research progress in these fields regarding LCA, i.e., goals and scope, functional units, impact assessment categories, system boundaries, geographical context, and uncertainty analysis. These studies include the similar type of different studies considering plastic waste recycling, each taking a different approach to defining the system boundaries, revealing how the decision to include or exclude factors such as transport can have a significant impact on the outcomes. Additionally, compared to these similar studies on mixed-plastic waste management, different available options are used to quantitatively compare the impact outcomes, revealing how the context and parameter selection can affect the results. This review aims to highlight the prospect of LCA during the development of a waste management framework as an efficient waste recycling tool and recommend a research gap for the development of an improved management framework in the future.

A life cycle sustainability assessment of organic and conventional pork supply chains in Sweden

Most existing life cycle assessment studies that have compared the sustainability of organic and conventional pork supply chains are environmental assessments. The economic and social sustainability dimensions of pork supply chains are currently under-researched. The study reported here was designed to assess the environmental, economic and social sustainability of conventional and organic pork in Sweden. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment was undertaken using 20 indicators expressed per unit product (1000 kg pork fork weight) and per unit area (1000 ha of farmland) for the four main subsystems in pork supply chains: (1) farm and feed production, (2) slaughter, (3) wholesaling and retailing, and (4) consumption. The organic pork supply chain out-performed the conventional chain in 11 of the 20 indicators expressed per unit product and 18 of the 20 indicators expressed per unit area. It was therefore the more sustainable of the two chains in nearly all the indicators expressed per unit area. However, the organic supply chain was less sustainable in some of the indicators expressed per unit product because, more feed per kg of pork was required in organic pork production. Pig welfare improvement leads to higher production costs and environmental impacts. Assessment of all three sustainability dimensions – environmental, economic and social – helps to identify trade-offs between these three pillars of sustainability. However, the selection of indicators influences results, and obtaining environmental, economic and social data simultaneously is challenging.

Life cycle assessment of cleanroom for micro-electro-mechanical systems fabrication with insights on sustainability

The cleanroom is used for manufacturing of high accuracy, high sensitivity, and small-sized Micro-electro-mechanical systems such as micro-sensors and micro-actuators. It is a controlled environment, in which the contaminant particles, temperature, and humidity are maintained within limits recommended by the International Standards Organization (ISO). The design, construction, and assessment of the design sustainability and energy sustainability during full production time and idle-time of a cleanroom are reported in this paper. Evaluation of design sustainability of the present cleanroom was carried out through experiments on the time taken for scavenging of contaminant particles out of the positive pressure cleanroom by the air handling units. The cleanroom designed in the present work scavenges all sizes of contaminant particles to as low a value as 2% of the prescribed ISO class within 10 min. Assessment of energy sustainability of the cleanroom was done using two metrics of net total pressure efficiency (NTPE) and total energy performance index (TEPI) through a novel adaption of their concepts to the cleanroom. With measured values of NTPE of about 35% and TEPI of 5.6 for the entire MEMS production subarea of the cleanroom consisting of twelve fan filter units, the results of the present work are in close agreement with these metrics reported for a single fan filter unit in the literature. Finally, a novel adaption of the existing life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to cleanroom resulted in an environmental sustainability score of 56.1/60. The details of the work done on the environmental sustainability of the cleanroom are also presented. With the rapid advancements in technology, the sustainability and feasibility demonstrated in the present work through the novel way of applying lifecycle assessment methods, and two energy sustainability metrics to determine the efficacy of the design of a MEMS cleanroom can prove beneficial for developing economies such as SAARC and African countries.

Life Cycle Assessment of Beverage Packaging

Global plastic production has been increasing annually since World War II and is currently 380 million tonnes. Global concern about pollution from plastics in the seas and the environmental costs of plastics manufacture is rising. This study aimed to: i) review the costs, benefits, advantages / disadvantages of plastics as packaging materials and ii) use life cycle assessment to determine if there is less environmentally impactful beverage packaging than plastic bottles. As different beverages have different packaging needs, three categories were used: commonly used containers for milk, fruit juice and pressurised ‘fizzy’ drinks. The packaging types included in the assessment were glass bottles, aluminium cans, milk cartons, Tetra Pak, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and high-density polythene (HDPE) bottles. The ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006 standards for life cycle assessment formed the basis of the methodology. The open source software openLCA was used to conduct the assessments. Data was assembled from LCA databases such as the European reference Life Cycle Database of the Joint Research Center (ELCD), existing life cycle assessments, scientific reports and peer reviewed literature. The functional unit was set at a container that held one litre of fluid. The results found that in each category there was a less impactful beverage packaging than plastic bottles. In the Pressurised Beverage Category, 100% recycled aluminium cans would be the least impactful option, in the Fruit Juice Beverage Category Tetra Pak would be the least impactful option and in the Milk Beverage Category milk cartons would be the least impactful option.