A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
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ABSTRACT
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a very powerful tool in Industrial Ecology. It is a scientific approach to identify and evaluate the environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a process or product, right from raw material acquisition (‘cradle’) through production, use and disposal (‘grave’). This study deals with performing a comparative LCA to compare the environmental profiles of two product systems, more specifically the plates made of ceramics and plates made of biodegradable material such as cornstarch. Energy This project was carried out for the Yale Office of Sustainability, which was created in 2005 to facilitate the process of developing and implementing best sustainability practices at Yale.Energy
The Office wished to gain an insight into the environmental impacts of the plate ware being used at the residential college canteens so that it could recommend the use of the kind which was least damaging to the environment in the longer run. Energy In order to help them make a wellfounded choice between the alternatives, comparative LCA using SimaPro 7.1 software was performed. Developed by PRé Consultants, Netherlands; the software enables users to model and analyze complex life cycles in a systematic and transparent manner.Energy
After defining the goal and scope of the LCA, information was gathered from various sources, and using the software, the environmental impacts of the two kinds of plates were compared. It was found that for the same functional unit, the environmental impact of ceramic plates was 5 times that of the biodegradable plates. However, a minimum number of reuses of the ceramic plate to make the associated environmental impact equal to or smaller than that associated with the singleuse biodegradable plate was calculated and was found to be 50. Therefore, the choice from an environmental point of view should be in favour of reusable i.e. ceramic plates.Energy
