Hello and welcome to a new post. Today we discuss the topic of global warming potential of polymer resins as part of eco-profiles. A detailed post on sustainability in the plastics industry can be found here.
Life
cycle analysis (LCA) and eco-profiles
In
general, eco-profiles are used to determine the environmental impacts of
plastics. They are made out of different data sources. For instance,
PlasticsEurope.org uses Life Cycle Inventory datasets (LCI) and Environmental
Product Declarations (EPD) to calculate the eco-profiles for plastics.
The ISO standards for Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) are ISO 14040 and 14044, where 21 impact categories are lined out. Scope of those ISO standards is on the cradle-to-gate of the products. For
having a 360° view on the environmental impact, several values are estimated:
- Global Warming Potential (GWP)
- Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
- Acidification Potential (AP)
- Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP)
- Eutrophication Potential (EP)
- Dust/particulate matter
- Total particulate matter (Non-hazardous / hazardous)
Environmental
Performance
The figure
below shows the Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with the production
of 1 kg of polymer resin.
 |
| Eco-profiles: Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with the production of 1 kg of polymer resin |
 |
| Updated with bio-based long chain Polyamides, High Performance Polymers and Polyesters. |
 |
| Eco-profiles: Global Warming Potential (GWP) - raw data (updated with Bio-based polymers and PVOH) |
Eco-profiles
are a vital part for businesses to select their materials in the context of a
circular economy and low environmental impact. Results such as the Global Warming
Potential may even enter the technical data sheets of material manufacturers which
allows purchasers and engineers to pre-select the polymer resins.
Furthermore,
the data of plastics indicates a lower GWP level compared to competing metals
such as Magnesium (25.8 kg CO2 eq/kg Mg) and Aluminum (9.7 kg CO2 eq/kg Al).
Also, I
have written about bio-based polymers and circular economy here and here.
Thanks
for reading and #findoutaboutplastics
Greetings
Herwig
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Sources:
[1] https://legacy.plasticseurope.org/en/resources/eco-profiles
[2] Korea LCI database;
[3] Ecoinvent database
[4] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/31009455.pdf
[5] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/87/1/012016/pdf
[6] https://www.plastribution.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Radici-Plastics-Focus-on-innovation-sustainability.pdf
[7] Industrial Applications of Biopolymers and their Environmental Impact edited by Abdullah Al Mamun, Jonathan Y. Chen
[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926669016307580#fig0015
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