Q&A - LCA and Circular Business
Here we have collected some questions that were not all answered in our webinar on October 26th 2022 because of time constraints.
Q: How many % of fishing net waste in the bio composite to produce the furniture (OneLoop, Circular Solutions)?
A: Approximately 30% is plastic recycled from fishing equipment including nets and ropes
Q: What is the life cycle impact of mixing virgin wood with plastics for furniture? Is there a way to use the recycled plastic without the virgin wood?
A: The wood we use is a by-product from a local sawmill, so it is also a recycled material. Adding the wood fibres reduces the overall use of plastic (non-renewable) materials without impacting the recyclability. The carbon footprint of the material can also be lower if used correctly.
Q: Could you give us more information about it the Waste to Value digital platform? How do you connect the industry? Do you categorize the type of waste and link it to a specific market?
A: The platform has just been through a pilot phase but there is still a lot of work to be done. We are actually looking for entrepreneurs who would be interested in taking the idea we have developed and turning it into a start-up.
Q: Can you share the link to the simple LCA system used by Matthew and Stora Enso?
Q: Can you share links to any public LCAs of PaaS cases that can illustrate the relative importance of different measures to optimise the PaaS-offer?
A: Someone in the chat replied with this: https://www.cradlenet.se/rapport-product-as-a-service"
Disclaimer: This material has not ben reviewed by Environmental Impacts Academy
Q: Can you recommend free LCA trainings?
A: If you want to start a career in LCA, one good alternative is to register as a candidate to the Environmental Impacts Academy internship program. More info can be found here https://www.environmentalacademy.org/students and you can register here https://www.environmentalacademy.org/apply-environmental-internship
If your company is looking for people with LCA competence, then Environmental Impacts Academy can help you. This video explains how our program works. You can book a meeting with us to learn more.
Q: As I understood circular not necessary means sustainable! If a am correct when you shown the example of glass, the products with the highest percentage of recyclable material shown higher damage to the ecosystem (if i remember right)?
A: Not in the case I (Daniel) showed, the strategies always yielded benefits. That said, there are MANY scenarios in which it could backfire, e.g. if the process to recycle has higher burdens than those saved by the material, or if there are unintended side effects (e.g. we now emit a chemical that has a higher impact on human health, that we didn't have before).
Q: So, in some case, can you consider fossil fuel textiles sustainable? Or is it unsustainable in any case?
A: Synthetic materials can have a lower environmental footprint than plant based ones. An LCA comparing alternative materials for the same use would give the answer in each case. Remember to look at use of water, impact on biodiversity etc. in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.
The most sustainable alternative when it comes to textiles is anyway to make them durable and that they would be used for as long as possible, i.e. produce less textiles.
Q: My focus is in reusing food, food scraps. Can you use LCA in food since you are dealing with shelf life?
A: You can indeed, and LCA of food products is very common. In the case of food waste, you need a very good model of what happens with that waste (and in your process that revalorizes it). In cases like this, I've found it valuable to think about "combos" of cycles (my cycle and the next), instead of going into too much allocation complexity)
Q: I'm working on LCA of gloves. Can someone recommend the database which will be effective to use? As we are doing cut to pack services. It is very difficult to collect the information from vendors about environmental load.
A: You can always go hybrid: Ecoinvent has a lot of specific processes, and you can fill the gap with input output data. In Earthster we implement USEEIO, which has for example "Leather and allied product manufacturing”
Q: What do you think of the fact that some people want to count the "avoided landfill" (subtracting the landfill burden from the impact) in addition to the "cut off" perspective? isn't it double counting ?
A: I (Daniel) might not be understanding the scenario fully, but... if instead of landfilling, you recycle, there are 3 effects: a) we avoid landfilling, b) we avoid producing the material again, and c) we have the burdens of whichever process we have added. In the "linear" version (with landfill), you need to account for the impacts of landfilling. If you recycle in turn, you'd add a different process that doesn't include landfilling. That's how I understand the "avoided landfill". If you subtract landfill somewhere again (without changing the rest of the assumptions), it would indeed be double counting, but I have not heard of such a suggestion (not saying it doesn't exist!)
Q: What is the data source on Earthster and are different geographical based data available
A: We have currently implemented Ecoinvent and USEEIO, and working on ExioBASE and a number of others