BULETINUL INSTITUTULUI POLITEHNIC DIN IAŞI - Universitatea ...

260 Olga Marina Montes and Vasile V. Merticaru
concepts of Reducing, Reusing, Recycling and Recovery of material resources
are also very important in providing Sustainable Industrial Development.
Of course, the “cradle-to-cradle” way in LCA is nowadays generally
accepted as the only viable solution for providing environmental protection and
avoiding the depletion of natural resources, as long as materials can be reused,
no waste gets produced or otherwise it can be recycled so that no damaging
impacts on the environment are generated within the closed loop of the product
lifecycle, [3], [5], as is shown in Fig. 1.
Off-site recycle
Product
Reuse
or Recycle
Product
use
On-site recycle
“Cradle to cradle”
LCA
Product
marketing
Raw material
extraction
Product
transportation
and storage
Raw material
processing
Product
Packaging
Fig. 1 – LCA based on “cradle-to-cradle” concept.
Product
manufacturing
On the other hand, as a policy measure which comes to outstand the
industrial producer’s crucial role in reducing the environmental impacts of their
products throughout their entire lifecycle, Extended Producer Responsibility
(EPR), encourages the reuse of products and packaging and, not less important,
the Design for Environment practices [5].
In relation to the above mentioned considerations, the paper presents a
theoretical study and business justification concerning the opportunity for the
establishment of a new factory for glass recycling, respectively for turning
waste glass into raw material for manufacturing new usable glass products. The
presented study is part of a research approach developed in the direction of
establishing the economical and technical conditions for establishing the
discussed glass recycling factory in the province of Valladolid, autonomous
community of Castilla y León from Spain, as possibility to enlarge the number
of similar enterprises, for regional sustainable development.