Life cycle assessment of EPS and CPB inserts: design considerations and end of life scenarios

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) and corrugated paperboard (CPB) are used in many industrial applications, such as containers, shock absorbers or simply as inserts. Both materials pose two different types of environmental problems. The first is the pollution and resource consumption that occur during the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental management 2005-02, Vol.74 (3), p.195-205
Main Authors: Tan, Reginald B.H., Khoo, Hsien H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
case studies
Corrugated paperboard
Design
Design and end-of-life comparisons
environmental impact
environmental models
Environmental Monitoring
Environmental Pollutants - analysis
Eutrophication
Expanded polystyrene
Fossil Fuels
gas emissions
Greenhouse Effect
Impact assessment
Incineration
Industrial Waste
insulating materials
landfills
life cycle (organisms)
Life cycle assessment
Life cycles
Models, Theoretical
Paperboard
pollution
Polystyrene foams
Polystyrenes
production technology
Singapore
waste incineration
Waste Management
waste paper
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Summary:Expanded polystyrene (EPS) and corrugated paperboard (CPB) are used in many industrial applications, such as containers, shock absorbers or simply as inserts. Both materials pose two different types of environmental problems. The first is the pollution and resource consumption that occur during the production of these materials; the second is the growing landfills that arise out of the excessive disposal of these packaging materials. Life cycle assessment or LCA will be introduced in this paper as a useful tool to compare the environmental performance of both EPS and CPB throughout their life cycle stages. This paper is divided into two main parts. The first part investigates the environmental impacts of the production of EPS and CPB from ‘cradle-to-gate’, comparing two inserts—both the original and proposed new designs. In the second part, LCA is applied to investigate various end-of-life cases for the same materials. The study will evaluate the environmental impacts of the present waste management practices in Singapore. Several ‘what-if’ cases are also discussed, including various percentages of landfilling and incineration. The SimaPro LCA Version 5.0 software's Eco-indicator 99 method is used to investigate the following five environmental impact categories: climate change, acidification/eutrophication, ecotoxicity, fossil fuels and respiratory inorganics.
ISSN:0301-4797
1095-8630
DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2004.09.003