Life Cycle Analysis

Introduction

Life Cycle Assessment  (LCA) is a tool to assess the potential environmental impacts of products, systems, or services at all stages in their life cycle [ISO 14001:2004].

Types of LCA: •Cradle to Gate:  raw materials to finished good (no use or end life considerations)

Types of LCA: •Cradle to Grave:  Considers everything from harvesting materials to the disposal or recycling or re-use of the finished goods

Why is LCA important?

  • Helps ensure compliance with government regulations
  • Helps decrease the environmental impact of a given product
  • Identifies ways to improve sustainability
  • Identifies ways to “green” all aspects of product’s life
  • Can reshape company strategy
  • Can help marketing
  • Can reshape company image
  • Identify product improvements

 

 

Resources

Presentations on LCA can be found in the downloads section.

An informative website that promotes responsible production and use of paper as a communication medium as well as provides environmental information about paper as a communication medium can be found at www.twosides.us

An introduction to LCA can be found at:

http://www.ncsu.edu/biosucceed/php/redirect-courses.php?dest=life-cycle-analysis

A tool that allows those interested in exploring differences between paper grades (on average) with respect to environmental implications is available on the web:

http://calculator.environmentalpaper.org/home.  It should be mentioned that this tool can distinguish differences between industry averages of different paper grades or between different basis weights of the same paper type.  However, it is not reasonable to use these industry average results to claim anything about an individual paper product, since the variation in raw material procurement and manufacturing can be so radically different for the same product produced by different manufacturers or even by the same company at a different manufacturing site.  Likewise, the comparison of a specific manufacturer's product to another manufacturer's product, whether similar or disimilar products, should not be made based on industry averages. 

 

 

Carbon Footprint of Paper Products

The following is an abstract on a study describing LCA methods on paper products.  The focus is on the carbon footprint of coated free and mechanical sheets.  The entire paper can be found in the downloads section of this website.

Effect of Methodology on the Life Cycle Analysis of Paper Products.

Version: February 7, 2012

Executive Summary:

Paper products are integral to the quality of life currently enjoyed in North America.  These products have significant environmental benefits but also have environmental impacts. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a method in which the potential impact of a product on the environment is evaluated from its cradle (raw material procurement) to grave (end-of-life).   Standard methods of performing LCAs exist (ISO 14040, 14044); however, within those methods, many choices about the methodologies are made by the practitioner, which tend to be subjective and influenced by personal value judgments. 

The Carbon Footprint of a product is defined herein as the overall greenhouse gas impact of a product during its life cycle, from cradle to grave and can be part of a full life cycle analysis. The effect of  LCA methodology choices in determining Carbon Footprints of paper products are explored herein. 

Three LCA’s of paper were reviewed: a Paper Task Force study (2002), a Heinz study (2006) and a NCASI study (2010).   The Paper Task Force study analyzed the LCA of printing and packaging paper materials with two separate systems: (1) virgin paper with disposal and (2) production of recycled paper with recycling, and has recently been revised to better reflect the actual flows of paper through recycling and waste management.  The Heinz study performed a partial LCA on Time and InStyle magazines focusing only on the Carbon Footprint, with a significant amount of primary data but without any environmental burdens inherent in upstream production of input materials like bleaching chemicals or printing inks. It used a “cut off” allocation method for recycling.  The NCASI study was a LCA on catalog product (among other printing and writing grades) that included upstream processing of materials as well as a complex open loop recycling allocation method.  The Heinz study reported 1.1 ton CO2e per ton of product whereas the NCASI study reported 3.5 ton CO2e per ton of product.  Several differences in the two studies were identified that could contribute to this.

Co-product and recycling allocation are important parts of a LCA for paper; the choice of recycling allocation methods can have a significant effect on the final result. The effect of the recycling allocation method was explored on the Carbon Footprint for catalog (coated freesheet) paper using the FEFPro model and North American average data. It was determined that the difference in the carbon footprint results for North American catalog  between  the cut off (not mentioned in ISO) recycling allocation method and the ISO 14049 number of uses recycling allocation method increased with recovery rate but was not sensitive to the utilization rate.

Recommendations are the following:

  • The use of standard methods (ISO 2006a, b) is integral in producing valuable LCAs.
  • When considering two related products in the same life cycle such as virgin or recycled materials, the choice of available allocation methods can determine whether virgin or recycled material is promoted; uncertainty and  sensitivity analyses and external review are important in establishing the reasonableness of the chosen allocation method. 
  • The number of uses method in an open loop recycling model is appropriate for the Life Cycle Analysis of paper products, providing adequate partitioning of burdens that are derived from shared processes such as raw material procurement, pulping, and final disposal. 
  • As based on data in this paper, the recovery of used paper for manufacture of new materials or use in incineration to create energy is more desirable than landfilling.  Recovery of used paper should be encouraged; the maximum amount of paper that is  recovered is determined by economic/technical  considerations. 
  • With respect to the utilization of recovered paper in specific products, the Carbon Footprint data in this paper demonstrate that a blanket statement such as “all paper products should maximize use of recovered paper” is not substantiated.
  • Industry average data are useful for an industry to benchmark its overall performance. 
  • The use of industrial averages of environmental impacts to promote a specific paper product relative to other similar paper products is not reasonable.  Simplified calculators using industry averages should not be used for specific product labeling.  These calculators are useful for benchmarking an industry or understanding average impacts of paper products versus alternate materials like plastics. There are very large ranges of environmental performance for one type of paper product from manufacturing site to site.  Due to this large range, it is imperative when product labeling to base the claims on site and product specific LCA utilizing established methods (ISO 2006a, b).