life cycle assessment

Life Cycle Assessment

Analysis of environmental impacts of products from the design stage through end-of-life.

Stages in a life cycle assessment

- Extracting and processing of raw materials

- Manufacturing and packaging

- Use and operation during its lifetime

- Disposal at the end of its useful life

extracting raw materials

damaging local environment i.e cutting down forests and mining

processing of raw materials

indirectly damaging environment

-lots of energy required i.e extracting metals from their ores or fractional distillation of crude oil

manufacturing and packaging

energy use

release of pollution

production of waste products

Impact of using a product

1) how much damage it does during its lifetime

2) how long the product is used for

disposing via landfill

-chemicals may seep out into environment

-taking up space for nature

disposing via burning the waste

release pollutants into environment

raw material in a plastic bag

crude oil

Raw material in a paper bag

wood

manufacturing of a plastic bag

-hydrocarbons from fractional distillation will need to be cracked to make alkenes

-these can then undergo polymerisation to make plastics

manufacturing of a paper bag

-timber has to be pulped which requires lots of energy and produces lots of waste

Using plastic bags

reusable

Using paper bags

single use

disposing plastic bags

-not biodegradable

-take up space in landfill

-get into wild and harm animals

disposing paper bags

-biodegradable

-non-toxic

limitations of life cycle assessments

-hard to gather each specific step

-difficult to assess harm of each step in comparison

-can be manipulated to give business positive advertisement