emission factor of a product

Question

Hello everyone,

I am calculating carbon footprint of a product and one of the inputs is reusable IBC, which is used in storing and packaging. But I cannot find anything like IBC on ecoinvent. It would be great if someone could help me with this. How to move ahead if any input is not available on ecoinvent.

Secondly, if I wish to see emission factor of an input, how can I see that in ecoinvent on openLCA ?

Thank you..!

Answer 1

Hi,

IBCs are made of HDPE (+blow mold) and steel. You have to model it yourself if it is not present in ecoinvent. More information might be here:  Biganzoli et al., Procedia CIRP, Volume 69, 2018, Pages 827-832. If the IBC is reusable, you can account for it by not using one IBC per production but a share (using 'item' as ecoinvent does with various infrastructure processes) according to the life time of the IBC.

To get 'emissions factors' for single products, you have to open the flow's provider (right click on the flow in the Input/Output tab, open provider) and then calculate (Direct calculation or build a product system) the impacts from here. The fastest way is to use the 'Direct impacts' tab in case you work with ecoinvent system process version (LCI). You then have to select the respective LCIA method. As you are doing PCF (I guess), stick to the IPCC 2021 (incl. biogenic CO2) method. Feel free to have a look in the manual for all those functions https://greendelta.github.io/openLCA2-manual/

Hope this helps