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Reviewing environmental life cycle impacts of biobased polymers: current trends and methodological challenges
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment ( IF 4.8 ) Pub Date : 2020-10-15 , DOI: 10.1007/s11367-020-01829-2
Diana Ita-Nagy , Ian Vázquez-Rowe , Ramzy Kahhat , Gary Chinga-Carrasco , Isabel Quispe

The aim of this review is to evaluate previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of first- and second-generation bioplastics, to understand the state of the art and the main problems addressed during the development of new bioplastics. Furthermore, it provides an overview on land use change (LUC) impacts accounted for, methodologies chosen, and the results obtained. Studies related to the impact assessment of bioplastics and published between 2007 and 2018 were gathered. Five keyword strings were used to perform a wide search and select relevant LCA studies. The study aimed to analyze critical methodological aspects in LCA, in order to determine the most common choices made during biobased material analyses, as well as major limitations. Three filters were applied to select comparable studies, ending with a final number of 17 papers. Recommendations were obtained by comparing common practices performed by different authors with suggested best available practices mentioned in handbooks and guidelines. Interestingly, LUC metrics and impacts were, most of the time, neglected. Thus, a specific assessment and discussion was performed regarding the methods used to quantify LUC impacts, considering its importance during the production of biobased materials. The study discussed the main environmental problems linked to the development of new biomaterials. LCA of agricultural products or systems, when compared with fossil-based counterparts, is expected to show higher environmental impacts in categories directly affected by fertilizer use, occupied and transformed land, among others. Thus, studies that included additional impact categories besides global warming (e.g., eutrophication or acidification) concluded that biobased materials present higher impacts, recommending improvements in farming practices to improve their overall environmental profile. Moreover, this review gathered methodologies used to account for LUC impacts and the results obtained. The main constraint of including LUC impacts was the lack of a standardized methodology, as well as large uncertainties in existing methodologies. Most studies concluded that improvements in farming practices might reduce the attributed environmental impacts with the reduction of the amount of land, fertilizer, pesticides, and water used. Studies computing LUC impacts agreed on the importance of including these impacts and concluded that greenhouse gas emissions of bioplastic production would increase, but in most cases would still be lower than the impact of their fossil-based counterparts. However, challenges remain when computing LUC impacts that need to be tackled when working with the available methodologies, including the collection of reliable inventory data (site-specific or regional data) and regionalized characterization factors.

中文翻译:

审查生物基聚合物的环境生命周期影响:当前趋势和方法学挑战

本综述的目的是评估第一代和第二代生物塑料的先前生命周期评估 (LCA) 研究,以了解最新技术和新生物塑料开发过程中解决的主要问题。此外,它还概述了考虑的土地利用变化 (LUC) 影响、选择的方法和获得的结果。收集了 2007 年至 2018 年间发表的与生物塑料影响评估相关的研究。五个关键字字符串用于执行广泛的搜索并选择相关的 LCA 研究。该研究旨在分析 LCA 中的关键方法学方面,以确定生物基材料分析过程中最常见的选择以及主要限制。应用三个过滤器来选择可比较的研究,最终得到 17 篇论文。建议是通过比较不同作者执行的常见做法与手册和指南中提到的建议最佳可用做法而获得的。有趣的是,LUC 指标和影响在大多数情况下都被忽视了。因此,考虑到 LUC 影响在生物基材料生产过程中的重要性,对用于量化 LUC 影响的方法进行了具体评估和讨论。该研究讨论了与新生物材料开发相关的主要环境问题。与基于化石的同类产品相比,农产品或系统的 LCA 预计在直接受化肥使用、占用和改造土地等影响的类别中表现出更高的环境影响。因此,除了全球变暖之外,还包括其他影响类别的研究(例如,富营养化或酸化)得出的结论是,生物基材料的影响更大,建议改进耕作方式以改善其整体环境状况。此外,本次审查收集了用于说明 LUC 影响和获得的结果的方法。包括 LUC 影响的主要限制是缺乏标准化的方法,以及现有方法的巨大不确定性。大多数研究得出的结论是,随着土地、化肥、杀虫剂和水的使用量的减少,农业实践的改进可能会减少归因于环境的影响。计算 LUC 影响的研究同意包括这些影响的重要性,并得出结论认为生物塑料生产的温室气体排放量会增加,但在大多数情况下,仍会低于基于化石的同类产品的影响。然而,在计算 LUC 影响时仍然存在挑战,在使用可用方法时需要解决这些问题,包括收集可靠的清单数据(特定地点或区域数据)和区域化特征因素。
更新日期:2020-10-15
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