Abstract
Sustainability of products is related to Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment. It is widely understood that environmentally preferable products cannot be simply defined by “Recyclable,” “natural,” “renewable resource based,” “biodegradable,” “chlorine free,” “reusable,” or “organic.” It is the product’s complete life cycle that must be environmentally preferable. Misconceptions still exist, particular on plastics. But looking closer there is no environmentally good or bad material, there are only good or bad applications of a material. This means consistent rules for sustainability assessment on a life cycle basis are important. Standard approaches already used in industry practice and can be complemented with further aspects. Tools are established, databases exist, and experts are have already formed networks. Further improving polymers for more sustainable products is hence a process that has already started, by consistently combining existing life cycle approaches, tools, and databases. Herein are summarized misconceptions, rules, standard approaches and needed additions, tools, databases, and experts related to the Sustainability of polymers.
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Notes
- 1.
The functional unit specifies the function of the product system being studied and its efficiency. It serves as a reference for the established environmental impacts.
- 2.
Unit processes allow the partitioning of inputs and outputs to each process step. Unit processes may consist of one or several processes up to a whole production site.
- 3.
Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
- 4.
Troposphere: Lower part of the atmosphere up to about a height of 10 km.
- 5.
Gases with a strong absorption band in the range of infrared (IR) light are called greenhouse gases [43]. Water steam and carbon dioxide are typical examples.
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Wolf, MA., Baitz, M., Kreissig, J. (2009). Assessing the Sustainability of Polymer Products. In: Eyerer, P., Weller, M., Hübner, C. (eds) Polymers - Opportunities and Risks II. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry(), vol 12. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2009_10
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