Abstract
Goal, scope and background
The industrial packages sector has great importance for the transport sector in Europe. These containers, mainly wooden pallets and spools, are subject to European legislation, which promotes their reuse and recycling. This study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impact of the current management system in this sector and the benefits and drawbacks of different reuse intensities as a waste prevention strategy as opposed to the recycling option.
Materials and methods
In this paper, four case studies located in Spain and representative of the wooden package sector in Europe are analysed: high reuse pallet, low reuse pallet, low reuse spool and null reuse spool. For the LCA study cases, the functional unit is that required to satisfy the transport necessity of 1,000 t by road. The impact and energy consumption assessment methods used are CML 2 Baseline 2000 and Cumulative Energy Demand. Data are mostly provided by the leading enterprises and organisations in this sector.
Results
The paper provides, as a first result, a comprehensive inventory of the systems under study. Secondly, our assessment shows that the systems with higher reuse intensity show a reduction in energy and wood consumption and all the environmental impact categories except for the global warming potential from 34.0% to 81.0% in the pallet study cases and from 50.4% to 72.8% in the spool ones. This reduction is at the expense of the maintenance stage, which on the contrary increases its impact, although it is still relatively small—less than 7% in all the impact categories and flow indicators of the study cases. The highest impact stages are transport, raw material extraction and the process chain. The final disposal and maintenance stages are the lowest impact, contributing at most to less than 30% of the impact in the pallet study cases and 10% in the spool cases.
Discussion
Wood consumption (WC), directly related to the number of containers needed to satisfy the functional unit, is the main factor in determining the impact of the stages, especially in the raw materials extraction and process chain stages, assuming that these are undertaken with the same technologies in all the case studies. Other variables, such as the management system, the maintenance index and the final disposal scenario, affect the impact of the remaining stages: transport, maintenance and final disposal. The global warming potential results obtained demonstrate the environmental benefits of using containers made of a renewable resource such as wood instead of using other materials, but these results are not expected to prioritise the lower reuse systems because of their better performance in this category.
Conclusions
Reuse, a strategy capable of reducing the environmental impacts of the wooden container systems, is preferable to recycling, while the package maintenance tasks are still feasible. Therefore, reuse, combined with recycling as final disposal, should be encouraged to reduce the demand for natural resources and the waste generated.
Recommendations
Based on these results, attention should be paid to the maintenance stage, which, being the lowest-impact one, could substantially reduce the impact of the remaining stages.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arena U, Mastellone ML, Perugini F (2003) Life cycle assessment of a plastic packaging recycling system. Int J Cycle Assess 8(2):92–98
ASERMA (Wood Recovery Spanish Association) (2006). Available at: http://www.aserma.org
Boustead I, Hancock GF (2003) Handbook of industrial energy analysis. In: Frischknecht R, Jungbluth N (eds) Implementation of life cycle assessment methods. ecoinvent report no. 3. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, pp 22–28
Bowyer J (1995) World and other raw materials for the 21st century. For Prod J 45(2):17–24
Confemadera (Confederación Española de Empresarios de la Madera) (2006). Available at: http://www.confemadera.es
Dornburg V, Faaij APC (2005) Cost and CO2-emission reduction of biomass cascading: methodological aspects and case study of SRF poplar. Clim Change 71:373–408
ecoinvent (2006) Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories. Available at: http://www.ecoinvent.ch/
Eldag H (1980) Wood and wood products. In: Altenpohl DG (ed) Materials in world perspective; Assessment of resources, technologies and trends for key materials industries. Springer, Berlin, pp 105–117
EU (1994) Directive 94/92/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 1994 on containers and containers waste. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu
EU (2004) Directive 2004/12/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004 amending Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste. Official Journal of the European Union. Available at: http://europa.eu.int/
European Commission (2001) White Paper: European transport policy for 2010: time to decide. Available at: http://europa.eu.int
European Confederation of Woodworking Industries (CEI-Bois) (2006). Available at: http://www.cei-bois.org
European Federation of Pallet and Packaging Manufacturers (FEFPEB) Roadmap (2006). Available at: http://www.fefpeb.eu
Guinée JB et al. (eds) (2001) Life cycle assessment. An operational guide to the ISO standards, part 1 and 2. Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM) and Centre of Environmental Science (CML), Den Haag and Leiden, The Netherlands
Gustavson L, Madlener R, Hoen HF, Jungmeier G, Karjalainen T, Klöhn S, Mahapatra K, Pohjola J, Solberg B, Spelter H (2006) The role of wood material for greenhouse gas mitigation. Mitig Adapt Strategies Glob Chang 11:1097–1127
Hillier W, Murphy R (2000) Life-cycle assessment of forest products—a good story to tell. J Inst Wood Sci 15:4
Hischier R, Althaus H, Werner F (2005) Developments in wood and packaging materials life cycle inventories in ecoinvent. Int J Life Cycle Assess 10(1):50–58
INE—Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Statistics National Institute) (2006a) Available at: http://www.ine.es
INE—Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Statistics National Institute) (2006b) España en la UE de los 25. Available at: http://www.ine.es
ISO—International Organization of Standardization (2006) 14040. Life cycle assessment—Principles and framework. ISO, Geneva, Switzerland
IPCC (2001) IPCC third assessment, climate mitigation 2001. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Lindfors LG, Christiansen K, Hoffmann L, Virtanen Y, Juntilla V, Hanssen OJ, Ronning A, Ekvall T, Finnveden G (1995) Nordic guidelines on life cycle assessment. Nordic Council of Ministers, Nord 1995-20, Copenhagen, Denmark
Mata TM, Costa CAV (2001) Life cycle assessment of different reuse percentages for glass beer bottles. Int J Life Cycle Assess 6(5):301–319
Perez-Garcia J, Lipke B, Commick J, Marniquez C (2005) An assessment of carbon pools, storage and wood products market substitution using life-cycle analysis results. Wood Fiber Sci 37:140–148 (Corrim Special Issue)
Pimentel D (2003) Food production and energy crisis. In: Frischknecht R, Jungbluth N (eds) Implementation of life cycle assessment methods. ecoinvent report no. 3. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, pp 22–28
Rivela B, Moreira MT, Muñoz I, Rieradevall J, Feijoo G (2006a) Life cycle assessment of wood wastes: a case study of ephemeral architecture. Sci Total Environ 357:1–11
Rivela B, Hospido A, Moreira MT, Feijo G (2006b) Life cycle inventory of Particleboard: a case study in the wood sector. Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(2):106–113
Ross S, Evans D, Webber M (2003) Using LCA to examine greenhouse gas abatement policy. Int J Life Cycle Assess 8(1):19–26
Schulz H (1993) Entwicklung der Holzverwendung im 19., 20. und 21. Jahrhundert [Development of the use of wood in the 19th, 20th and 21st century]. Holz Roh Werkst 51:78–82
Schweinle J (2000) Analyse und Bewertung der forstlichen Produktion als Grundlage für weiterführende forst- und holzwirtschaftliche Produktlinien-Analysen. In: Mitteilungen der Bundesforschungsanstalt für Forst- und Holzwirtschaft (BFH), Nr 184, 2nd ed. Komissionsverlag Max Wiedebusch, Hamburg
Spanish Environmental Ministry (2006). Available at: http://www.mma.es
Sutton WRJ (1993) The world’s need for wood. In: The globalisation of wood: supply, processes, products, and markets. Forest Products Society, Madison, WI
Turkendburg WC, Beurskens J, Faaij A, Fraenkel P, Fridleifsson I, Lysen E, Mills D, Moreira JR, Nilsson LJ, Schaap A, Sinke WC (2000) Section 7: renewable energy technologies. In: Goldbemberg J (ed) World energy assessment of the United Nations. UNDP, Washington, DC
Werner F, Ritcher K, Bosshart S, Frischknecht R (1997) Ökologischer Vergleich von Innenbauteilen am Bsp. von Zargen aus Massivholz, Holzwerkstoff und Stalhl [Ecological comparison for indoor building materials—comparison of frames made by solid wood, fibre wood and steel]. EMPA/ETH-Forschungsbericht, Dübendorf, Zurich
Werner F, Althaus H-J, Küninger T, Richter K, Jungbluth N (2003) Life cycle inventories of wood as a fuel and construction material. Final report ecoinvent 2000 no 9. EMPA Duebendorf, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Duebendorf, CH
Acknowledgements
The authors of the article thank the enterprises and organisations involved in this study: CHEP, FACEL and Santasusana, among others, for their collaboration and the provision of data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible editor: Jörg Schweinle
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gasol, C.M., Farreny, R., Gabarrell, X. et al. Life cycle assessment comparison among different reuse intensities for industrial wooden containers. Int J Life Cycle Assess 13, 421–431 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-008-0005-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-008-0005-0