Life Cycle Assessment
Completed Projects
2006
Polystyrene and Paper Cups
2005
Alternative Water and Sewerage Servicing
2003
Waste Technologies
LCA Design
2001
Waste LCA
Polystyrene and Paper Cups
This project involved the comparison of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of cups for a popular juice outlet in Australia. The LCA looked at different types of cups and compared them with common alternative options such as waxed paper.
Alternative Water and Sewerage Servicing
Yarra Valley Water commissioned the Centre and CSIRO Urban Water to explore the environmental impacts of providing different water and sewerage services to future greenfield and infill developments. This is stage 1 of a 2-stage project.
Yarra Valley Water had identified the need to provide sewerage services to backlog areas for the reduction of nutrient loads to nearby creeks, rivers and streams.
Five styles of water and sewerage servicing for the developments were selected, namely:
- Conventional centralised reticulated supply and wastewater
- Third pipe system with reclaimed water
- Third pipe system using stormwater; and
- Self contained servicing configuration drawing upon on-site greywater reuse, rainwater tanks and on-site wastewater treatment systems
- Self contained servicing configuration drawing upon on-site greywater reuse, rainwater tanks and but connected to sewer for black water treatment
For each system a complete water and nutrient balance was undertaken along with an LCA and LCC.
The results from this study have enabled Yarra Valley Water to consider the environmental impacts of different options when undertaking strategic planning for water service provisions in upcoming greenfield and infill developments.
This study is documented in two reports:
CSIRO, (2005) Sustainability of Alternative Water and Sewerage Servicing Options - YVW; Kalkallo and Box Hill PAC Developments
This report details the outcomes of the water and contaminant balance analysis and conceptual design of the water infrastructure component for Kalkallo greenfield development and Box Hill Principle Activity Centre (PAC) - an infill development.
Grant. T., Opray. L., (2005) LCA Report for Sustainability of Alternative Water and Sewerage Servicing Options.
This report is an assessment of alternative water and sewerage servicing options using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Alternative Fuels
There were two stages to this project. Stage One included a scoping study that looked at a limited group of fuels used in heavy vehicles. Stage 2 looked at a literature review and a desk analysis of existing Australian and overseas studies that assess the emissions characteristics of 15 fuels.
The Centre for Design and CSIRO were working on the LCA of alternative fuels for 3 years. The work has examined many alternative fuels- from ethanol and biodiesel to the gaseous fuels and conventional petroleum and diesel fuels with lower sulfur contents.
Results show moderate improvements in greenhouse performance with biofuels, and to a lesser extent gasesous fuels. Most of the alternative fuels have improvements in air quality indicators when compared with current fuels. However emission data from vehicles is very variable making comparisons difficult.
Three classes of emissions are considered: greenhouse gases, air pollutants, and air toxics. International tailpipe results were used to supplement the small amount of available local data on tailpipe emissions for the majority of the fuels studied. Substantial Australian data was available for calculating the upstream emissions of most of the fuels
The heavy vehicles report is available at the CSIRO website
More recent work has been undertaken on light vehicle fuels and technologies including fuels such as diesel, petrol, CNG, and LPG. It also involves technologies such as euro 3 and euro 4 engines, hybrids technologies.
The report on light vehicles study is available at the DEW & R website
Project Partners
- CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research
- Melbourne University Department of Mechanical Engineering
- CSIRO Division of Energy Technology
- Southern Cross Institute of Health Research, Lismore
- Parsons Australia Pty Ltd
Methodology
Stakeholder consultation was an essential part of this study. Some ninety stakeholders were invited to comment on the study. These included fuel producers, vehicle manufacturers, government stakeholders, and environmental groups. Two stakeholder forums were held – one in Canberra and one in Melbourne – and these were followed by focussed roundtables for detailed discussion and comments on the exposure draft.
The study, completed over a five-month period from March to July 2001, consists of a literature review and a desk analysis of existing Australian and overseas studies that assess the emissions characteristics of 15 fuels. Three classes of emissions are considered: greenhouse gases, air pollutants, and air toxics. International tailpipe results were used to supplement the small amount of available local data on tailpipe emissions for the majority of the fuels studied. Substantial Australian data was available for calculating the upstream emissions of most of the fuels
The study adheres to the international standards framework for conducting life-cycle analysis contained in the ISO14040 series (International Standards Organisation, 1998). A full life-cycle analysis of emissions takes into account not only direct emissions from vehicles but also those associated with the fuel's: extraction; production; transport; processing; conversion and distribution. Key issues addressed in the report include the system boundaries for the analysis, and the allocation of emissions for co-products, by-products and waste products
Many of the feedstocks for fuels used in this study are either co-produced with other products or are from by-products and wastes from other production processes. Two options available for dealing with co-production are to split emissions between product streams - known as allocation - or to expand the study to take into account potential flow-on effects of providing a new use for the coproducts and on systems currently using the co-products - known as system boundary expansion. The study follows the international standard on life-cycle assessment, which states that allocation should be avoided where possible. However alternative allocations have also been examined to determine whether there is a significant difference between the results.
SimaPro 5.0 life-cycle analysis software was used during the study. The software has an extensive Australian database of manufacturing energy input and emissions. Process trees outlining emissions from the production of fuels are produced by SimaPro and are included in the report. Other software packages are available but these are generally based on US emissions scenarios that are often not relevant to Australia.
Fuels are compared on the basis of both the mass of emissions per unit of energy used (g/MJ), and the mass of emissions per kilometre of distance travelled. The mass of emissions per kilometre travelled is the environmentally more meaningful figure, though it is subject to greater variability than the mass per unit energy. The mass of emissions per tonne-kilometre and the mass per passenger-kilometre are also calculated for trucks and buses respectively. Both upstream (pre-combustion) emissions and downstream (tailpipe, or combustion emissions) were considered. Emissions were also divided between those in urban and non-urban areas. We use the term “exbodied emissions” to refer to the cumulative upstream and downstream full fuel-cycle emissions.
Waste Technologies
Findings from this 2003 study of the environmental evaluation of a range of waste technologies concluded that Kerbside recycling delivers environmental benefits and can be further improved.
Additional environmental benefits can be gained from separating organic materials, turning them into compost and applying them to land.
Significant environmental savings across a range of indicators including global warming, resource depletion, human toxicity, eco-toxicity, biodiversity, land use, water use and aesthetic impacts are achieved from undertaking kerbside recycling. The higher the yields of materials recycled, the greater the savings.
The study, commissioned by EcoRecycle Victoria (now Sustainability Victoria), aimed to provide a transparent environmental evaluation of a range of waste management technologies for dealing with mixed waste fractions and organic waste fractions of the Victorian waste stream. The study findings contributed to the knowledge used to prepare the Victorian Solid Waste Strategy.
Detailed information on the study
The study examines 15 waste management configurations in four basic groups. These are outlined below:
(A scenarios) - Single stream systems;
(B scenarios) - Two stream systems (garbage and recyclables);
(C scenarios) - Three stream systems (garbage, recyclables, green waste); and
(D scenarios) - Three stream systems (garbage, recyclables, green and food waste)
The technologies investigated were recycling and reprocessing for packaging materials; for source separated organics (aerobic composting and anaerobic digestion); and for residual waste treatment (aerobic stabilisation, anaerobic digestion, gasification/pyrolysis, incineration and landfill).
Each option was examined in two specific case studies - City of Greater Bendigo (regional council) and the Hume City Council (metropolitan council).
Environmental indicators used as qualitative measures in the results were:
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Each scenario was ranked across the environmental indicators. The ranking table provides an overview of how each scenario performs under the different environmental indicators, thereby illustrating that a scenario may have, for example, good savings in global warming impact, though may impacts in eco-toxicity due to the release of harmful substances.
Additional environmental benefits can be gained from separating organic materials, turning them into compost and applying them to land. The benefits that were (at least partially) quantifiable and therefore incorporated in this study are listed below.
- Increased water holding capacity;
- Carbon sequestration; and
- Reduced pesticide and fertiliser use (although the fertiliser replacement value of composts is relatively low, there are benefits which arise also from avoided fertiliser production etc).
Residual waste treatment adds substantial environmental savings
In addition to the environmental benefits through the activities described above, all residual waste treatment technologies show substantial additional environmental savings. These are achieved predominantly through the following factors:
- Avoided (or reduced) emissions from landfill
- Generation of electricity thereby offsetting electricity production
- Recovery of (additional) recyclable materials (particularly the capture of metals).
Thermal residual waste treatment shows higher benefits in several relevant environmental categories
The study has shown that, in the Victorian context, thermal based waste treatment options with high electricity generation rates appear to deliver better environmental outcomes than other residual waste treatment options assessed. This result is based on the assumption that energy recovered from waste will replace electricity generated from Southeast Australia’s electricity supply system that is largely based on black and brown coal. In other words, the assumption here is that an efficient waste-to-energy plant with extensive emission controls replaces electricity generated from an environmentally less than optimal power supply system.
The issue of benefits for replacing ‘dirty’ electricity affects a number of environmental indicators namely resource depletion, human, terrestrial, marine and freshwater aquatic toxicity. The LCA approach tends to adopt a kind of ‘comparative static’ approach. It is difficult to predict with any degree of certainty what the energy situation will be like in 20 or 25 years time. If a different assumption were to be made, for example that future electricity generation in Victoria were to be generated from natural gas and that it would be more appropriate to assume such electricity generation is avoided, then the outcomes of this LCA could be different, particularly for toxicity and nutrient load indicators.
Potential impacts not accounted for
As indicated above, the environmental benefits of compost application are likely to have been significantly underestimated.
In the residual waste treatment scenarios, there are uncertainties about some aspects of gasification and pyrolysis plants. Since there are almost no such plants in operation worldwide on a commercial scale (for MSW), and a range of different technologies are currently under consideration, the toxicity and long term emission profile of residues is not well understood. No data was available on the environmental profile of these residues and as a consequence their environmental impacts were not modelled in this study. It is expected that these residues could be safely handled however this may require significant energy input for immobilisation.
Other potential impacts that have not been taken into account include forest impacts from reduced paper recovery (for Scenarios A1 and A2), and aesthetics and odour impacts of landfills (for treatment facilities, these have been assumed to be minimised through state-of-the-art ventilation and filtration systems which were considered in emission profiles and energy uptakes).
In using the rankings to select optimal waste management outcomes, the authors suggest four criteria be examined. The first criterion is good performance in greenhouse gas savings. Greenhouse is a key priority for the Victorian government as well as the Australian government and industry. Secondly, the option should have a good average ranking across the remaining environmental criteria and, thirdly, the option should not have a strongly negative ranking on any of the indicators. In addition to these criteria the uncertainties associated with the option should be understood and taken into consideration.
All scenarios with gasification/pyrolysis perform well. However, these are the technologies with significant data uncertainties and it is therefore suggested that too much emphasis not be placed on the rankings of these scenarios (A2, B4, C4, D4).
Scenario B5, with a kerbside recycling system and conventional waste-to-energy, ranks highly amongst the options. However, as stated previously, the dominance of electricity and energy issues in this assessment may say more about the environmental profile of Victoria's electricity supply (being based largely on brown coal), than it does about waste management.
Scenario D3, featuring kerbside recycling, composting of garden and food waste, and aerobic stabilisation of the remaining mixed waste, also ranks highly. It should be noted that anaerobic digestion of source separated food and garden waste shows higher benefits than composting (D2 vs D1) hence a scenario D3 with anaerobic digestion of food waste would rank even higher than the current D3.
The next highest environmental performances are delivered by a group of scenarios which all feature stabilisation or digestion of mixed waste (B2, B3, C2, C3).
It is worth noting that the results are based on certain assumptions on landfill gas generation and capture rates and the degradability of organic materials. These assumptions have been based on recent European work (Smith et al. 2001). There is substantial uncertainty in assumptions on material degradation and the fate of landfill gas, which should be taken into account when looking at these results.
Project Partners
The project was undertaken by the Centre for Design at RMIT University and Nolan ITU.
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LCA Design
This project intends to meet a growing need from designers and regulators for real-time appraisal of design performance of built assets against an emerging set of sustainability criteria.
Use of LCADesign (Life Cycle Analysis of Design) will enable building design professionals to make informed decisions on the environmental impact of commercial buildings by providing detailed environmental and cost measures for different materials, products and designs, automatically from their 3D CAD drawings.
This project was undertaken through the Co-Operative Research Centre for Construction Innovation and the project partners include CSIRO, the Queensland Department of Public Works and Services and the Centre for Design at RMIT University.
Waste LCA
This study, commissioned by EcoRecycle Victoria (now Sutainability Victoria) concluded the most important factors for maximizing the environmental benefits from landfill are:
- Recycling to the highest value product so as to avoid the production of high value, and high environmental impact, virgin materials.
- Maintain or increase the mass of materials from household catchments, without compromising the usability of the material at the end of life. This increase in total environmental returns is from avoided products and avoided landfill, while also making the collection more efficient on a per tonne basis.
- Reduce smog and other transport emissions from waste collection vehicles in urban areas by using efficient vehicles, with either pollution control equipment, and/or alternative fuels such as natural gas.
- Maintain good landfill management practices particularly in terms of gas capture for energy recovery, landfill capping and leachate control. Strategies for dealing with un-recyclable paper and plastic fractions should be investigated, particularly in the context of management of the broader organic material stream.
Background
EcoReycle Victoria commissioned two LCA studies to investigate the life cycle imapcts of domestic waste management. The first study (known as Stage 1) began in 1997 looking at three materials - glass, PET and steel - and investigated the landfilling and recycling of these materials. After completion of this study, a second study was commissioned which investigated the entire paper and packaging materials presented by the consumer at the kerbside (known as Stage 2).
The materials investigated included old newspapers and the following packaging materials - paper and baord (i.e., corrugated containers and box-board), liquidpaperboard gable top and aseptic cartons, high density polyethylene bottles, polyvinyl chloride bottles, other mixed packaging plastics (i.e., flexible and rigid), glass bottles and jars,steel cans and aluminium cans.
The two waste management systems that were modelled were landfill and recycling. Three different landfill degradation sceanrios were mdoelled for the organic fractions. Five environmental indicators were modelled - greenhouse, smog precursors, embodied energy, water use and solid waste.
A copy of the report is available to download:
Paper and Packaging Waste Report
http://www.cfd.rmit.edu.au/content/download/123/836/file/Pkg&PapWaste2_Main_Report.pdf
Project Partners
- CRC for Waste Management and Pollution Control (CRC WMPC), and its member organisation the Centre for Water and Waste Technology at UNSW,
- the Centre for Design at RMIT, and the Centre for Packaging
- Transportation and Storage at VUT as part of the CRC for International Food Manufacture and Packaging Science.