Life Cycle Assessment Of Bamboo/Wood Products And Its Application

At present, some environmental problems such as shortage of resources and energy,environmental degradation, are challenging with the world and hinder social sustainabledevelopment. To deal with these problems, the former management models, e.g. controllingpollution focusing on the end in the early time and clean production in the 80s last century, cannot satisfy or not fully satisfy the demand on the sustainable development of economy,resources and environment. For pushing forwards clean production of forestry industry, fromthe end of the production line to reduce the pollution, the dissertation tried to perform LCAresearch on bamboo/timber products according international standard ISO14040～14043 andnational standard 24040～24043, aiming at setting up a LCA assessment system ofbamboo/timber products and conducting rational assessment from theory and products to guidefirm's clean production and sustained design and reform.In the sense of theory, LCA method was introduced and applied in forestry industry in thepaper, and a LCA appraising system of bamboo/timber products was defined including goaland scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), life cycleinterpretation, of which, conducting steps covered that choice, classification, characterization,normalization, classification, weighting of impact category, type indicators and characterizationmodel. To define this impact guideline system, such factors as the current situation ofbamboo/timber products development in the country and international rules were taken intoconsideration. Thus it is significant to provide support on drawing up relative forestry industryregulations and application of clean production and recycle economy in the firms.Eco-indicator 99 methods were modificated and then used in life cycle assessment ofbamboo/wood products in China.In the view of product, three typical firms (D,Y,S) were chosen and the environmentalimpact assessment software SimaPro6.0 currently used popularly in the world was employed inthe paper to perform LCA on bamboo flooring and solid flooring covering total life cycle stageand production stage. Acconrding to assessment results and life cycle inventory, improvementmeasures were given.Firm D that presents the advanced bamboo flooring production level was as the example; LCA was conducted on total life cycle of bamboo floor. The results indicated that bamboo stripwas the most environmental load stage, then was bamboo plate, bamboo floor and usage stage;while bamboo forest cultivation and bamboo waste were helpful to climate change. Iftransportation was separated, environmental damage was production＞transportation＞using.Comparing with other non-bamboo/non-wood floorings, each life cycle stages of bambooflooring represented most environment friengly. Additionally through LCA comparisonresearch on products of the three firms, the result shown that single environmental damagevalue was respectively D(0.652)＜S(0.757)＜Y(1.61). However for the three firms, mostlydamaged was resource. For firm D and Y, the first impact category was fossil fuel consumption,while for S it was respiratory inorganics. Environmental impact analysis shown thatbamboo/wood products should be produced in those place where near to forestry land. Itindicated that the LCA result was reliable by sensitive analysis.For bamboo floor production stage among the three firms, environmental load was D＜S＜Y. For Y, the most impacted category was fossil fuel consumption, and for S and D, it wasrespiratory inorganics. For climate change type, the value all was negative. The LCA result wasreliable by sensitive analysis. The most serious process was bamboo strip production. Thoseimpact factors of three firms were different, so improvement measures of them also weredifferent.For comparison of working process among the firms, the result shown that environmentload was rather different. For bamboo strip production stage: environment load were D＜S＜Y,D＜Y＜S, S＜D＜Y in bamboo strip production,bamboo plate production and bamboo floorproduction respectively. The environmental load without transport and cultivation was Y(1.66)＞S(1.04)＞D(0.73), the same sequence with the former.Life cycle assessment of whole life cycle and production stage of solid wood flooringshown that: 1) The serious process stage in the whole life cycle was production, then waswasting and using stage. If transportation was separated, environmental damage wasproduction＞transportation＞using. 2) For production stage, the most damaged category wasresource, and it had the same order of damage category sequence with bamboo flooringproduction stage. For climate change type, the value aoo were negative. The improvementmeasures were started with residual combustion, transportation, electricity and paints consumption.3) Comparing the production stage of solid wood flooring bamboo flooring, theenvironment impact single score was K＜D＜S＜Y. The most damage category all wereresource, the most impact category was fossil fuel. 4)Environmetal load of four firms were K＜D＜S＜Y eliminating transportation and cultivation, namely solid wood flooring was moreenvironment friendly than bamboo floorings, but the difference is tiny.By this case study and discussion on extension and application of the defined impactguideline system, it would provide relative data for setting up bamboo/timber products LCAdatabase in the country.Through the application of LCA on bamboo/timber product, at the end of the dissertationbased on summarizing assessment indicator choice of LCI, characterization model,characterization parameter and normalization parameter, some suggestion and prospectivedevelopment were presented.