Abstract

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THE CRADLE TO CRADLE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT: A CASE STUDY

Vishal Yashwant Bhise, Ajay Kashikar


The growing environmental awareness among the society, customer, stakeholders and tremendous pressure of government bodies to comply with the environmental norms, the industries and professionals are forcing themselves towards the world class environmental management practices. By taking into account the trend, the work carried out on one of the product ‘Deflector Roll’. The roll undergoes heavy wear & tear, high compressive & torsional stresses; as a result it cracks/breaks after certain period of use. The new manufacturing creates environmental & human health burden through various processes performed on it. By taking this gap into account, the life cycle of roll, modelled in an eco-intelligent way so that after the useful life, the material is brought back into the techno sphere without waste. The proposed life cycle model consists of Extraction and Production of Raw Material, Manufacturing, Use, Remanufacturing, Reuse and finally Recycling. This modified framework enables to form the Cradle to Cradle life cycle loop by two ways, viz. while remanufacture/reuse the roll is brought back into the product system and while recycling again around 95% of material is brought back into the techno sphere. Further, in order to evaluate the environmental performance of roll with proposed model, the ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ tool is chosen. The roll is assessed through all of its life cycle phases. The inputs and outputs during each life cycle phase are collected and recorded. The assessment carried out on the modified life cycle model in one of the reputed LCA software tool ‘GaBi 6.’ In order to assess the life cycle impacts the ‘CML 2001’ methodology is adopted which consist of the impact categories like Global warming potential, Acidification, Ozone Layer depletion and many others. Further, the results show that the proposed model creates the negligible impacts during manufacturing, use, remanufacturing and reuse. Also, the two way formation of cradle to cradle loop concludes that the proposed product system model of roll is sustainable.