Using environmental product declaration as source of data for life cycle assessment: a case study

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of using the environmental performance indicators retrievable from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) into a non-conventional Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) procedure for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), replacing inventory background data from secondary datasets. In standard methodology, when specific inventory data are not available for life cycle stages that do not constitute the core process of the investigated system, secondary data are gathered from globally acknowledged sources such as international LCI databases. Once EPDs are available for the specific products included in the analyzed system, through this approach characterized data are used in place of traditional input and output information, with higher quality level. The approach proposed here is compared with traditional practice by means of a real case study, i.e. the analysis of switching primary packaging material, from glass to plastic, of water bottles distributed onboard a cruise ship. The results show that the experimented alternative approach for life cycle inventory is consistent with the collection of input/output data from literature, supporting the same conclusions for decision making process. Through conventional data capture from secondary sources, reductions in weight of the bottle body, corresponding to manufacturing standards of the specific supplier in the analyzed study, are not taken into account. The use of primary characterized data is showed to avoid overestimations of potential environmental impacts for the various typologies of bottles, with different relative shares in relation to the format. In the implementation of such non-conventional pattern, the selection of the same set of characterization factors is a necessary condition for the reliability of the results.