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Weekly UpdatesConsumers continue to expect more from the packages that deliver and protect the products they consume. In response, brand owners strive to innovate with new package designs, materials and user friendly features.
Helping to fuel this is an interest in sustainability that continues to garner favor and attention in society, even with continuing energy and economic uncertainties. The concept, development and application of sustainable packaging have now touched all stakeholders in the value chain. Suppliers and package producers are diligently working to answer the need of this rapidly changing market.
Raw material selection is a vital component in producing products that meet the stringent demands of today's sustainable package. Skepticism is mounting with consumers as many products with eco-labels flood the shelves of stores.
In response, government, NGOs (non-government organizations) and trade organizations are adopting guidelines for marketing claims made on packaging. This year the Federal Trade Commission is adopting new guidelines on green marketing, the first such change in more than a decade.
Market interest in environmental information on products that is credible, unbiased, verifiable, and covers the entire life cycle is growing. Life cycle assessment tools have become an important quantitative tool to validate the environmental impacts and claims of products and processes.
Methods and Materials
Eco-Efficieney Methodology And Study Alternatives
An Eco-efficiency analysis (EEA) evaluates both the economic and environmental impacts that products and processes have over the course of their life-cycle (1). The methodology was created by BASF, in partnership with an external consultant, and has since been further developed. BASF's EEA is based upon the ISO 14040 standard for life cycle analyses, however in addition to this standard, includes additional enhancements, which allow for the expedient review and decision-making at all business levels. Since its inception in 1996, BASF has completed nearly 400 analyses on a wide variety of products and processes. In particular, an EEA evaluates the environmental impact of the production, use, and disposal of a product or process in the areas of energy and resource consumption, emissions, toxicity and risk potential, and land use. The EEA also evaluates the life cycle costs associated with the product or process by calculating the costs related to materials, manufacturing, waste disposal and energy.
The alternatives compared under this EEA study are summarized in Table 1, and consisted of water-based, solvent-based, and UV-cured printing inks. The Customer Benefit (CB), or defined level of output, for this study was defined as the production, use and disposal of 1,000 [m.sup.2] of 3 mil LDPE flexographic printed film with a 25% solid image coverage area as applied by each individual printing station on a 4-color CI (Central Impression) press.
The context of this EEA study compared three products competing in a consumer market with an incremental innovation level at a regional level over the course of an entire life cycle.
System Boundaries
The scope of any EEA is defined by its system boundaries, which define the specific elements of production, use, and disposal that are considered as part of the analysis. The system boundaries for the three alternatives evaluated in this particular study are shown in Figure 1.
The production, use, and disposal phases of the various printing inks differed slightly between the alternatives, therefore, the environmental and economic impact analysis focused on all three phases for each printing ink alternative.
Environmental And Cost Categories
The environmental and economic aspects are deemed and weighted equally important in an eco-efficiency analysis. As briefly mentioned earlier, environmental impact is characterized using 11 categories, including: primary energy consumption, raw material consumption, global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), acidification potential (AP), smog creation potential, water emissions, solid waste generation, toxicity potential, risk potential, and land use.
Primary energy consumption includes the cumulative energy utilized during production, use, and disposal as well as the energy content remaining in the products. All forms of energy are converted back to their primary energy sources, measured in MJ/CB, and include: crude oil, natural gas, anthracite, lignite, uranium ore, water power, biomass and others.
The individual energy values are summed to obtain the total primary energy consumption. Additionally, key raw materials consumed in a process are calculated in terms of kg/CB with a cut-off criterion being < 0.1%.
These values are weighted with a factor that reflects the demand and exploitable reserves of the raw materials so that the lower the reserves of a raw material and the higher the rate of consumption, the scarcer that material is and therefore the higher the weighting factor it is assigned.
The amount of air emissions were weighted with a factor reflecting their potency regarding the global warming, acidification, smog creation and ozone depletion potentials.
The air emissions for each major greenhouse gas were adjusted for the 100-year GWP as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2). Water emissions are assessed through a critical volumes approach, which considers both the total amount of emissions to water, as well as the environmental toxicity of the chemicals being emitted.
Critical volumes (CV) are calculated as the ratio of the amount of chemical emitted to the Maximum Emission Concentration threshold limits For example, an emission of 200 mg NH4N with an MEC threshold value 10 mg/L results in a critical volume of 20 L (CV = 200 mg/10 mg/L).
The individual critical volumes are then summed for each emission to water in order to obtain an overall impact (L/CB). The solid waste emissions account for all materials generated and disposed of in a landfill, therefore materials that are recycled or reused are not counted as solid waste. Wastes are categorized as municipal, hazardous, construction and mining, with a weighting factor applied to each type to account for impact. The impacts are then summed to obtain an overall impact amount in kg/CB. The weighting factors are 1, 5, 0.2, and 0.4 for each waste category, respectively, and are based on costs for landfill which reflect the degree of potential environmental impact for each.
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Furthermore, even though land is considered to be a finite resource, most life cycle analyses do not include an evaluation of land use patterns. BASF's EEA, however, allows for the consideration of land use as an environmental impact category based on the degree of land development needed to fulfill the customer benefit.
Land use has five categories according to the degree of development that is needed. These categories include:
i) No Development--untouched ecosystems, forests, lakes, rivers, wetlands;
ii) Partially Developed--organic agriculture, green land, fallow, heterogeneous agriculture;
iii) Developed--conventional agriculture, modified areas;
iv) Covered--long-term paved areas, industrial areas, landfills, areas with buildings on them; and
v) Covered and Divided--long-term paved areas that divide ecosystem areas, transportation areas such as streets, rail tracks, canals.
The land use results are calculated based on the total amount of land used (m2/CB) with weighting factors applied to categories iii--v to reflect the higher potential impact for these land uses.
The toxicity potential was assessed not only for the components of the finished printing inks, but for the entire pre-chain of chemicals used to manufacture the components as well. The result is an assessment of life-cycle toxicity potential. The entire method for performing the analysis of toxicity potential is described in Saling et al. (2002)1 and is based upon the Hazardous Materials Regulations (R-phrases). A total score for toxicity potential is calculated and then weighted. From the standpoint of the final consumer the use phase is the most important so it is weighted at 70% of the total score while the production phase is weighted at 20% and disposal at 10%.
The risk potential covers the physical hazardous during the production, use, and disposal phases and also considers the risk of explosion, flammability, storage accidents, worker illness and injury rates, malfunctions in product filling/packaging, transportation accidents, and any other risk deemed relevant to the study. For this analysis risk potential was characterized based on working accidents, fatal working accidents, and working diseases.
From an economic standpoint, life cycle costs are evaluated for the following categories: capital investment, labor, supply chain, wastes, energy, raw materials, and environmental health and safety (EHS) programs. Raw material costs were based on the purchase price of the ink, films, and if necessary, the thermal oxidizer. The ink costs were calculated based on the raw material costs in addition to an equal percentage mark-up and the film cost was based on the type of film used and average pricing. The costs for energy were based on prices for electricity and natural gas.
As mentioned earlier, the production, use, and disposal phases were all considered during this study, including the production labor, drum handling and logistics, and solid waste disposal costs. Particularly, in the use phase, the model assumed a 4-color CI flexographic printing press with each of the four stations applying 25% coverage of a solid color. The press was configured to print and dry/cure all three ink systems.
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