Questions about functional unit in a comparative study

Question

Hello guys :)

I am now doing a comparative study on a single-use coffee cup and a polypropylene coffee cup that can be collected, cleaned and reused for 400 times. Both cups are the medium size (280ml), I know I should set the functional unit to be the same for all compared product systems. So can I use the functional unit as:

"All materials and energy used to make 280ml coffee cups that can serve 11200ml coffee drinks totally. "

for a cradle-to-grave study?

Answer 1

Dear Vincent,

the functional unit would be a coffee cup with 280ml and 400 use cycles.

The materials and energy used to make the cup would be the reference flows (in order to obtain the functional unit).