Multifunctional electronic media-traditional media: The Problem of an Adequate Functional Unit A case study of a printed newspaper, an internet newspaper and a TV broadcast

Aim and Background: Electronic media are spreading rapidly and some of the services they offer are similar to traditional media. Frequently, credit is given to electronic media for causing less environmental impact, however, looking at it more closely, little is known about the comparability of the environmental impact of both kinds of media. Main reasons for this lack of knowledge are difficulties in defining an adequate functional unit for a comparison of usually multifunctional media, as well as problems in gathering large amounts of inventory data for complex electronic goods. Objective: Here an LCA case study was conducted for reading or watching the daily news in an online and a printed newspaper as well as on TV. Aim of this study was to find an adequate functional unit as well as to quantify the environmental impact of each of the media, including recommendations for the reduction of their impact. In order to account for the multifunctionality of the investigated media as well as for ISO 14040ff. guidelines for the definition of the functional unit, several functional units were chosen. The selected functional units cover a spectrum of close functional equivalence to an altogether different approach in comparing entire activities. Results: Compared on the basis of an average news item, the internet newspaper causes far more environmental impact than a TV news cast, which, in turn, causes more impact than a cutting of a newspaper. Major contributions to the high environmental impact of the internet newspaper are the manufacturing of the computer as well as operation of the necessary infrastructure for running the internet, in particular operation of the telephone network. Comparing media on the basis of consuming the daily news as a whole leads to less environmental impact for both of the electronic media in relation to a printed newspaper, even if shared amongst several readers. The comparative environmental advantage of the electronic media depends on a set of conditions: 1. No online information is printed. 2. Internet surfing is directed towards specific goals and therefore limited in time. 3. Power consumption is based to a large extent on renewable energy sources. This still holds true for the underlying national electricity mix of Switzerland with a high share of hydropower. A comparison of the average per capita time of watching TV with surfing in the internet and average paper consumption of free and bought print products also shows that most of the environmental impact results from print products. Interpretation: Summarising the previously shown results, different perspectives on media and, with it, different functional units lead-not surprisingly-to different results. Relations between the environmental impact of the three media change between approaches. A final conclusion on a qualitative level is drawn. The first functional unit stands for close functional equivalence, however, itdoes not resemble options of the consumer in real life. The cuttings of a newspaper cannot be bought as such and the consumer is normally not interested in a single news item. The second functional unit is more of a representation of real life choices and is a typical example of a consumer's choice that frequently has to decide between options which are not exactly functionally equivalent. Finally, the last approach, based on entire activities, supports the result of the previous approach. Perspective: The case study has shown that a comparison of multifunctional products or services excludes relevant environmental aspects, if functional equivalence is chosen as the unique reference unit. Thus, it is recommended to apply several approaches in order to do justice to the multifunctionality of the investigated products or services. ISO/TR 14049, with its concept of user acceptance, offers such a possibility to compare products or services which are still considered equivalent by the use

LCA study of a plasma television device

Purpose: Nowadays, there is one television device for every four human beings, making television one of the most popular pieces of electrical and electronic equipment in our society, with the so-called flat-screen technologies gaining more and more market share. For one such technology, the plasma display panel (PDP), no complete life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have existed thus far, and therefore, the question as to their environmental performance, especially as compared with LCD technology, is still open. This paper describes a detailed LCA study of a PDP television, including a first comparison of it with the two competing technologies, the cathode ray tube and the liquid crystal display technologies. Methods: An LCA study from cradle to grave—i.e., from the extraction of the various resources used in the production to the final recycling or disposal activities—has been established taking the complete life cycle of one PDP television as the functional unit. Results: Analysis of the complete life cycle of a PDP television shows that the distribution stage is of no importance. Of the remaining life cycle stages, the importance of the use phase depends on the actual production mix used for the electricity consumed. A fossil-based electricity mix, such as the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE)-mix, causes an impact in the use phase about two times higher than in the production phase. The production phase is dominated by the printed wiring boards and their various components—responsible for more than three quarters of the impact of this first life stage. Last but not least, in the end-of-life (EoL) phase, substantial environmental benefits are possible through a modern recycling system. A comparison of the PDP with competing technologies shows the PDP technology to be the more environmentally friendly one, based on the impact per square-inch of screen. All technologies show thereby a similar picture—production and use having high impacts, distribution being irrelevant, and EoL resulting in an ecological benefit. Conclusions: Hence, it is advisable to use electronic devices such as a PDP television as long as possible, because within the manufacturing stage, the production of the electronics is by far the most important production part. Some of this high environmental impact in electronics can be recovered in an up-to-date recycling system. The second most important life stage is the use phase, which depends on the production mix of the electricity consumed; the more non-renewable sources used for its production, the higher the impact of the use phase will appear. Hence, electronic devices should be used specifically and be turned off when not in us

Framework for LCI modelling of releases of manufactured nanomaterials along their life cycle

Purpose: Numerous publications in the last years stressed the growing importance of nanotechnology in our society, highlighting both positive as well as in the negative topics. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is amongst the most established and best-developed tool in the area of product-related assessment. In order to use this tool in the area of nanotechnology, clear rules of how emissions of nanomaterials should be taken into account on the level of life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling are required—i.e. what elements and properties need to be reported for an emission of a nanomaterial. The objective of this paper is to describe such a framework for an adequate and comprehensive integration of releases of nanomaterials. Methods: With a three-step method, additional properties are identified that are necessary for an adequate integration of releases of nanomaterials into LCA studies. Result and discussion: In the first step, a comprehensive characterisation of the release of a nanomaterial is compiled—based on reviewing scientific publications, results from expert workshops and publications from public authorities and international organisations. In the second step, this comprehensive overview is refined to a list containing only those properties that are effectively relevant for LCA studies—i.e. properties that influence the impacts in the areas of human toxicity and ecotoxicity, respectively. For this, an academic approach is combined with a second, more practical, view point, resulting together in a prioritisation of this list of properties. Finally, in a third step, these findings are translated into the LCA language—by showing how such additional properties could be integrated into the current LCA data formats for a broader use by the LCA community. Conclusions: As a compromise between scholarly knowledge and the (toxicological) reality, this paper presents a clear proposal of an LCI modelling framework for the integration of releases of nanomaterials in LCA studies. However, only the broad testing of this framework in various situations will show if the suggested simplifications and reductions keep the characterisation of releases of nanomaterials specific enough and/or if assessment is accurate enough. Therefore, a next step has to come from the impact assessment, by the development of characterisation factors as a function of size and shape of such releases

Developments in Wood and Packaging Materials Life Cycle Inventories in ecoinvent (9 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background: This paper gives an overview on how the wood and packaging material production is inventoried in ecoinvent. Packaging materials have been a very important topic in the area of Life Cycle Assessment for more than twenty years. Wood is the most important renewable material and regenerative fuel used worldwide, and an important raw material for paper / board. Several methodological problems arising when inventorying wood for material and energetic uses in a generic database are discussed in more detail. Within the ecoinvent project, the Swiss data base for life cycle inventory data, two reports are dedicated to these two important topics report No. 9 for wood and report No. 11 for packaging materials. Methods: The whole wood chain has been modeled in a consistent way. This allows one to use this data for LCAs of building materials, bioenergy or paper production. The data represent average technologies used in Central Europe in the year 2000. A revenue-based co-product allocation approach is used for the different outputs. Correction factors are introduced for the consistent modeling of mass-based, material inherent wood properties such as solar energy, carbon uptake and land use. For packaging materials, the datasets represent European average data for the most often used materials as well as specific datasets for the production of actual packaging boxes and containers. Results and Discussion: For wood, revenue-based allocation and the use of the correction factors for mass-related wood properties are shown and explained. For packaging materials, the importance of the raw material wood to the total load is shown. Furthermore trends in the data inventories for board packaging materials over the last two decades are discussed: mainly due to the increased comprehensiveness of the data, higher cumulative emissions can be observed. Conclusion: For wood, the database ecoinvent provides consistent datasets for the entire chain from forestry to intermediate products such as timber, different types of wood-based boards, chips, pellets, etc. For packaging materials, the number of datasets of basic materials has been extended. A modular concept for actual packaging container datasets allows the user an easy modeling of various types of packaging containers/boxes. In the area of paper and board, a comprehensive database for the production of various types of pulp, paper and board is provided, which is representative for the average European production situation. Outlook: Since wood is only limited and representative data for Europe is therefore not included, an update in the near future would be reasonable. Possible further extensions in the future could include various, final wooden products. For the data on paper/board, different levels of quality are observed, requiring a selective up-date of these data. Future extensions could include datasets for the import of pulp from overseas especially from South America and Canad

Establishing Life Cycle Inventories of Chemicals Based on Differing Data Availability (9 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background: In contrast to inventory data of energy and transport processes, public inventory data of chemicals are rather scarce. Chemicals are important to consider in LCA, because they are used in the production of many, if not all, products. Moreover, they may cause considerable environmental impacts. For these reasons, it was one goal of the new ecoinvent database to provide LCI data on chemicals. In this paper, the methods and procedures used for establishing LCIs of chemicals in ecoinvent are presented. Methods: Three different approaches are suggested for situations of differing data availability. First, in the case of good data availability, the general quality guidelines of ecoinvent can be followed. Second, a procedure is proposed for the translation of aggregated inventory data (cumulative LCI results) from industry into the ecoinvent format. This approach was used, if adequate unit process data was not available. Third, a procedure is put forward for estimating inventory data using stoichiometric equations from technical literature as a main information source. This latter method was used if no other information was available. The application of each of the three procedures is illustrated with the help of a case study. Results and Conclusion: When sufficient information is available to follow the general guidelines of ecoinvent, the resulting dataset is characterized by a high degree of detail, and it is thus of high quality. For chemicals, however, the application of the standard procedure is possible in only a few cases. When using industrial data, the main drawback is the fact that those data are often available only as aggregated data, thus being out of tune with the quality guidelines of ecoinvent and its main aim, the harmonization of LCI data. As a third approach, the use of the stoichiometric reaction equation is used for the compilation of LCI datasets of chemicals. This approach represents an alternative to neglecting chemicals completely, but it contains a high risk to not consider important aspects of the life cycle of the respective substance. Outlook: Further work in the area of chemicals should focus on an improvement of datasets, so far established by either of the two estimation procedures (APME method; estimation based on technical literature) described. Besides the improvement of already established inventories, the compilation of further harmonized inventories of specific types of chemicals (e.g. solvents) or of chemicals for new industrial sectors (e.g. electronics industry) are in discussio

Opportunities of 5G Mobile Technology for Climate Protection in Switzerland

5G mobile networks are intended to meet the increasing requirements placed on mobile communications. Producing and operating 5G infrastructure causes direct effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Meanwhile, 5G is expected to support applications that contribute to GHG abatement. We investigated (i) the GHG footprint of 5G infrastructure, and (ii) the GHG abatement potential of four 5G-supported use cases (i.e., flexible work, smart grids, automated driving and precision farming) for Switzerland in 2030. Our results show that 5G infrastructure is expected to cause 0.018 Mt CO2 e/year. Per unit of data transmitted, 5G is expected to cause 85% less GHG emissions in 2030 than today’s 2G/3G/4G network mix. The four 5G-supported use cases have the potential to avoid up to 2.1 Mt CO2 e/year; clearly more than the predicted GHG footprint of 5G infrastructure. The use cases benefit especially from ultra-low latency, the possibility to connect many devices, high reliability, mobility, availability and security provided by 5G. To put 5G at the service of climate protection, measures should be taken in two fields. First, the GHG footprint of 5G should be kept small, by installing only as much 5G infrastructure as required, running 5G with electricity from renewable energy sources, and decommissioning older network technologies once 5G is widely available. Second, the GHG abatements enabled by 5G-supported use cases should be unleashed by creating conditions that target GHG reductions and mitigate rebound effects. The final outcome depends largely on the political will to steer the development into the direction of a net GHG reduction

Towards Urban Mining—Estimating the Potential Environmental Benefits by Applying an Alternative Construction Practice. A Case Study from Switzerland

Modern cities emerged as the main accumulator for primary and waste materials. Recovery of both types from buildings after demolition/disassembly creates a secondary material stream that could relieve pressure from primary resources. Urban mining represents this circular approach, and its application depends on redefining current construction practice. Through the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and assuming primary resources as step zero of urban mining, this study estimates the impacts and benefits of conventional versus a circular construction practice applied to various buildings with different parameters and the country-level environmental potential savings that could be achieved through this switch in construction practice—using the increase of the residential building stock in Switzerland between 2012 and 2016 as a case study and key values from the experimental unit “Urban Mining and Recycling”, designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel and installed inside the NEST (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies) research building on the Empa campus in Switzerland. The results exhibit lower total impacts (at least 16% in each examined impact category) at building level and resulting benefits (i.e., 68–117 kt CO$_{2}$-Eq) at country level over five years, which can be further reduced/increased respectively by using existing or recycled components, instead of virgin materials