Integrated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Approach for Printing Service by Using Environmental Load Point (ELP) Method

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  • 清水 宏和
    早稲田大学大学院 環境·エネルギー研究科 永田研究室 清水印刷紙工 (株)
  • 永田 勝也
    早稲田大学大学院 環境·エネルギー研究科 教授

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Nowadays, life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly utilized for estimating the carbon footprint and helping consumers to be environment conscious and change their life style in order to facilitate the creation of a low-carbon society. With respect to printing services, the LCA and LCCO2 methods were established to numerically visualize the environmental load. Further, the negative impact from paper usage was emphasized definitely. It is possible for a publication-related service to shift from a paper-based business to a completely digitalized one but impossible for a packaging-related service to utilize digital technology in full scale since paper usage is unavoidable. Therefore, a printing service that relies on paper usage should figure out a solution to reduce the environmental load by establishing a new method of an integrated LCA approach. The new method should be able to provide answers that are different from those provided by previous approaches. Environmental load point (ELP), which is based on an evaluation of nine impact categories, was utilized as an integrated indicator of environmental load. Further, a solution to a packaging-related service was found by conducting sensitivity analyses. As a result, the promotion of "simple dismantling" of the package design, i.e., shifting from an appearance-oriented design to a recycling-oriented design, should be accelerated in order to reduce the environmental load caused by a printing service that cannot avoid the use of paper. The construction of a "recycling-oriented society" on the basis of the idea of "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle (3Rs)" should be kept in mind as long as paper usage continues, especially in packaging-related services.

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