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Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Plastic Products As Per ISO 14040

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Introduction: Life Cycle Impact Assessment

Hey Corpseed readers! In this blog, we are going to tell you about the life cycle impact assessment of plastic products as per ISO 14040. Primarily we need to understand the meaning of life cycle impact assessment.  LCIA is a very important process to assess the relevance of potential environmental effects on a product-based system on the findings of the life cycle inventory. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is made up of various components. Characterization, categorization, normalization, and weighting are the four components of life cycle impact assessment. The first two of these four components are very necessary for LCIA and normalization and weighting are optional in this process. The image below demonstrates all four components of the LCIA and their relationship to one another.  

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Life Cycle Impact Assessment

What Are The ISO Standard Of Life Cycle Assessment? 

These are the following ISO Standards used for the life cycle assessment (LCA) study. 

  • ISO 14040:2006:- This standard defines the complete life cycle assessment (LCA) principles and framework. 
  • ISO 14044:2006:- This standard defines the complete requirements and guidelines for life cycle assessment.

What is ISO 14040?

We have already discussed several types of ISO’s before and you could check them on our website. Today, we are going to talk about ISO 14040. ISO 14040 elaborates on the basic framework of life cycle assessment. ISO 14040 consists of so many things in itself such as the goal and scope of the life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle inventory analysis Phase (LCI), life cycle impact assessment phase (LCIA), interpretation phase life cycle, reporting and critical review of life cycle assessment, life cycle assessment’s limitation, connection between all the phases of life cycle and some conditions for use of value choices and optional elements.     

The complete study of Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle inventory (LCI) is covered under ISO 14040:2006. It does not provide a detailed explanation of the LCA technique or provide easy methods for each and every phase of the life cycle assessment. Although the intended use of LCA or LCI results is taken into account when the goal and scope of life cycle assessment are defined specifically.

What Are The Objectives Of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

The study of life cycle assessment has the following objectives:

  • Life cycle assessment provides an overall environmental model for the production, usage, and disposal of plastic packaging products or recycling. Life cycle assessment studies have some specific methodology for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
  • To produce life cycle data to start the packaging of the products such as woven sacks, plastic bottles, milk pouches, and shopping bags) and for them, the raw material energy demand increases and effect pollution level (air & water pollution), usage, recycling reuse, and final disposal.
  • This study is very useful in comparison to the life cycle data of jute, paper, glass bottle, paper bags, and also with compostable packaging material {PLA, a starch-based (100% bio-based) packaging material is also included.  

What Is The Material And Method For Life-Cycle Impact Assessment? 

The several life cycle phases are described in detail under the ISO 14040 standard, which specifies the method of life cycle impact assessment (LCA). The research study's context is established at the goal phase which is a very important phase in the whole process. There would be some inputs and these inputs of the system are identified during the life cycle inventory phase. The life cycle inventory phase is also a very important phase of life cycle impact assessment. The environmental effect categories are established because of the life cycle impact assessment phase as it consist of the complete information from the results is assessed at the interpretation phase of the life cycle. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), the life cycle inventory, and the interpretation of the results are all parts of this research project. With the help of this method of interpretation, it is possible to analyze the environmental impacts which are related to the manufacturing stage of plastic products (made from various plastic granules), from the extraction of raw materials for their injection procedure for molding which creates the creation of plastic garbage. 

Because of the focus on packaging choices, the LCA evaluation approach is used to identify the environmental impact and consequence categories linked to the life cycle assessment. There is some research that identifies the biggest environmental stresses on the supply chain, supporting operational and strategic choices for more effective and sustainable (environmentally friendly) operations management and packaging. The Life cycle assessment LCA study takes into account the needs for downstream processing energy (feedstock energy) of raw materials, process energy of the complete product made from specific materials, energy for use of products where transport energy is combined, and energy for disposal or recycling/composting/incineration/landfilling at the end of the life. 

The main purpose is to convert the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the various life cycle scenarios into a single footprint and for that IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) 2007 approach was utilized in this study. The method is discovered on the estimate of total/cumulative CO2 equivalent for producing the product in a boundary system (cumulative energy in the boundary system in terms of CO2 equivalent + cumulative greenhouse gas emitted in terms of CO2 equivalent), which has a major contribution in global warming. This is where it should be specifically mentioned that LCA results are based on experimental data (emission data at various production sites) and various theoretical data gathered from the specific literature.

  • The process energy of the product is calculated as 50 to 80% of the Gross Energy Demand (GED) which is the sum of feedstock and process energy. 
  • 10 to 20% of the feedstock energy would be taken as Recycling energy and vice versa. 
  • Use energy which also consists of the transport energy could be taken as 5 to 10% of the feedstock energy.

Conclusion

In this article, we talked about the importance of life cycle impact assessment on the basis of ISO 14040:2006 and we have shared the complete methodology for the same. This article talks about the different aspects of life cycle assessment. We talked about the guidelines, objectives, and methods of the life cycle assessment report of a general product. If you want any help regarding the procedure of Life cycle assessment (LCA) or life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) then you can visit our website Corpseed. We shall be glad to help you. Thank you for reading this blog, goodbye. 

This portion of the site is for informational purposes only. The content is not legal advice. The statements and opinions are the expression of author, not corpseed, and have not been evaluated by corpseed for accuracy, completeness, or changes in the law.

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Author
I have worked for many internet blog pages and news portals. currently, I am working as a content writer for Corpseed Pvt. Ltd. I like to write blogs and articles in the field of different services.
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