Journal of Cleaner Production 131 (2016) 509 e 522
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Detailed life cycle assessment of Bounty ® paper towel operations in the United States Wesley Ingwersen a , Maria Gausman b , * , Annie Weisbrod b , Debalina Sengupta a , c , Seung-Jin Lee a , d , Jane Bare a , Ed Zanoli b , Gurbakash S. Bhander a , Manuel Ceja b a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH 45238, United States b The Procter & Gamble Company, Global Product Stewardship and Product Supply, Cincinnati, OH 45224, United States c Texas A & M University, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, College Station, TX 77843, United States d University of Michigan, Department of Earth and Resource Science, Flint, MI 48502, United States
article info
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 5 November 2015 Received in revised form 28 April 2016 Accepted 29 April 2016 Available online 7 May 2016 Keywords: Consumer product Paper towel Sustainability metrics Sustainability indicators Life cycle assessment Life cycle impact assessment
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-established and informative method of understanding the envi- ronmental impacts of consumer products across the entire value chain. However, companies committed to sustainability are interested in more methods that examine their products and activities' impacts. Methods that build on LCA strengths and illuminate other connected but less understood facets, related to social and economic impacts, would provide greater value to decision-makers. This study is a LCA that calculates the potential impacts associated with Bounty ® paper towels from two facilities with different production lines, an older one (Albany, Georgia) representing established technology and the other (Box Elder, Utah), a newer state-of-the-art platform. This is unique in that it includes use of Industrial Process Systems Assessment (IPSA), new electricity and pulp data, modeled in open source software, and is the basis for the development of new integrated sustainability metrics (published separately). The new metrics can guide supply chain and manufacturing enhancements, and product design related to envi- ronmental protection and resource sustainability. Results of the LCA indicate Box Elder had improve- ments on environmental impact scores related to air emission indicators, except for particulate matter. Albany had lower water use impacts. After normalization of the results, fossil fuel depletion is the most critical environmental indicator. Pulp production, electricity, and fuels for product production drive fossil fuel depletion. Climate change, land occupation, and particulate matter are also relevant. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by pulp, electricity, papermaking, and land fi ll methane from the disposed product, drive climate change impacts. Pulp provides signi fi cant offsets to balance climate change impacts due to sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Ninety-nine percent of land occupation is for the growth of the trees for pulp production. Papermaking, electricity, and pulp production cause the most potential particular matter formation. © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
designing delightful consumer products while maximizing the conservation of resources. The company employs many tools, in- novations, and experts to make progress toward this vision. For example, in January 2012, the US EPA's Of fi ce of Research and Development's National Risk Management Research Labora- tory (NRMRL) and P & G signed a 5-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to support the development of methods and tools for sustainability assessment within consumer product life cycles. An initial result has been a sustainability assessment approach that incorporates LCA with the use of novel integrated metrics (Ingwersen et al., 2014; Young et al., 2012). This work builds on two decades of LCA experience with US EPA and
Procter & Gamble is a multi-billion dollar consumer products company that incorporates sustainability in its purpose (Procter and Gamble, 2015a, 2015b). P & G's sustainability vision includes powering its plants with 100% renewable energy, using 100% renewable and/or recycled materials in products and packaging, having 0% consumer and manufacturing waste go to land fi ll, and
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: gausman.mm@pg.com (M. Gausman).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.04.149 0959-6526/ © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator