#Travel mug life cycle analysis full#

The minimum is to have a 'cradle to grave' life cycle analysis and the best is 'cradle to cradle'. You have understood the trend, here it is also an LCA that takes into account all the stages up to the revalorisation of waste and the recycling of the analysed object. Cradle to cradle: it is from cradle to cradle. Here, however, all the stages are taken into account, but the object ends up in the landfill or in incineration etc. Cradle to grave: this is from the cradle to the grave. It is therefore not really of interest to the consumer but is important to the manufacturer. It therefore does not take into account all the distribution, consumption, use and end of life of the product. Basically, it corresponds to the path from the extraction of the raw material to the factory gate. Cradle to gate: in literal translation this means from the cradle to the gate. In practice, there are 3 different LCA scopes: This can be done from different angles depending on the limits you want to put on your project.

But how do you choose between a plastic colander made of 50% bamboo fibres and 50% recycled plastic, virtually indestructible, and a stainless steel colander, both produced in China? A comparative assessment based on an LCA will help us in this choice. For us as consumers, it is a question of using it as a comparison tool: to clean my house, should I take this natural and cheap product made close to home and without packaging (in bulk), or rather this synthetic chemical product in plastic packaging and produced in Eastern Europe? Expressed like this, the choice seems easy.

#Travel mug life cycle analysis full#

In the long term, when this practice is generalised, we can hope that it will help everyone to make informed product choices, to better consume with full knowledge of the facts. Finally, it can serve as a basis for product certification and also for regulatory purposes. It allows for innovation in functionality and improvement in the quality of products and activities, anticipating market expectations and encouraging more sustainable production and consumption patterns. This would also enable consumers to make choices between different products according to a scientifically recognised and of course standardised approach. It allows us to better control the risks and also the costs linked to the life cycle of products and activities, to identify the links in the chain from the extraction of materials to the end of life that produce the greatest impact (environmental or not), so that we can act on them as a priority. This illustrates the difficulty of translating an LCA analysis into a simple result for a quick comparison between different products with identical functions.ДЄn LCA can be used for many things and by many people. On the other hand, it is simply impossible to add up tons of CO2 produced with tons of heavy metal emissions. In reality, one kg of CH4 corresponds to 25 kg of CO2 emitted into the air. To do so, one must first convert the methane emissions into kg of CO2 equivalent emitted according to its environmental impact.

You cannot directly add up tons of CO2 produced with polluting methane emissions. We give you a first example of a product whose manufacture causes emissions of CO2 and methane (CH4), two greenhouse gases. One would obviously like to see this aggregate result expressed in 'tons of CO2 emitted', to echo the crucial problem of global warming. It is very difficult to make a high quality LCA, which could be certified, just as it is often difficult to arrive at an absolute and quantified assessment from A to Z expressed in a single aggregated result.