Eco Audit White Paper. - Granta Design
Eco Audit White Paper. - Granta Design Eco Audit White Paper. - Granta Design
combustion, not an option for steel, concrete,or brick. But think of it another way. If thematerials of the product are recycled or theproduct itself is re-engineered or reused, aneed is filled without drawing on virginmaterial, thereby saving energy. Carbonrelease works in the same way, with one littletwist: one end-of-life option, combustion,recovers some energy but in doing so itreleases CO 2 .Recycling passes material from one life-cycleto the next. In general it takes less energy andreleases less carbon to recycle a unit ofmaterial than it takes to create the samequantity of virgin material from ores andfeedstock—it is this that makes recyclingattractive. But is the saved energy and CO 2 tobe credited to the first life-cycle or thesecond? It can’t be credited to both, since thatwould be to count it twice. This difficulty isanalyzed in depth in references (2) and (3).Here we describe the way the Eco Audit Tooldeals with the problem.Recycling at end of life is a future benefit, onethat may not be realized for many years or,indeed, at all. If the concern is for presentresources, energy demands and climatechangingemissions, then it does not makesense to use the substitution method. Wetherefore assign a credit to the use ofmaterials with recycle content at the start oflife, and give no credit for recycling at the endThis focuses attention on the present, not thefuture, it avoids double counting and itconforms to the European guide-lines onassessing carbon footprint known asPAS 2050 and BSI 2008.But this choice still leaves us with a difficulty.One purpose of an eco-audit is to guidedesign decisions. Designers that strive todesign products using recycled materials willwish the eco-audit to reflect this, as therecycled content method does. On the otherhand, designers that strive to makedisassembly easy and to use materials thatrecycle well would also want the audit toreflect that, and the recycled content methodfails to do so. To overcome this we show barsfor the energy and carbon contributions to thefirst life as bars of solid colors, and show thepotential energy and carbon saving (orpenalty) arising from the end-of-life (EoL)choice as a separate, cross-hatched bar as inFigure 8.Step 2, transport allows for transportation ofthe product from manufacturing site to point ofsale. The tool allows multi-stage transport(e.g., shipping then delivery by truck). To useit, the stage is given a name, a transport typeis selected from the pull-down “transport type”menu and a distance is entered in km ormiles. The tool retrieves the energy / tonne.kmand the CO 2 / tonne.km for the chosentransport type from a look-up table andmultiplies them by the product weight and thedistance travelled, finally summing the stages.Step 3, the use phase requires a littleexplanation. There are two different classes ofcontribution.Some products are (normally) static butrequire energy to function: electricallypowered household or industrial products likehairdryers, electric kettles, refrigerators, powertools, and space heaters are examples. Evenapparently non-powered products, likehousehold furnishings or unheated buildings,still consume some energy in cleaning,lighting, and maintenance. The first class ofcontribution, then, relates to the powerconsumed by, or on behalf of, the productitself.The second class is associated with transport.Products that form part of a transport systemadd to its mass and so augment its energyconsumption and CO 2 burden.The user-defined inputs of step 3 enable theanalysis of both. Ticking the “static mode” boxopens an input window. The primary sourcesof energy are taken to be fossil fuels (oil, gas).The energy consumption and CO 2 burdendepend on a number of efficiency factors.When energy is converted from one form toanother, some energy may be lost.The CES EduPack Eco Audit Tool 6 © 2012, Granta Design
Figure 7. The Eco Audit Tool.
- Page 2 and 3: Contents1. Introduction ...........
- Page 4 and 5: Figure 2.Despite the formalism that
- Page 6 and 7: 60% or more of the energy—often m
- Page 10 and 11: Figure 8. The 1 st -life energy and
- Page 12 and 13: ecycle energy and recycle fraction
- Page 14 and 15: Figure 12. The energy and carbon ba
- Page 16 and 17: A portable space heaterThe space he
- Page 18 and 19: 6. Summary and conclusionsEco aware
- Page 20 and 21: Eco Audit ReportProduct NameBottled
- Page 22 and 23: Use:Energy and CO2 SummaryStatic mo
- Page 24: Dead weight (100 litres of water) 1
Figure 7. The <strong>Eco</strong> <strong>Audit</strong> Tool.
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