Advancement of a method for life cycle management – sustainability benchmarking of WPC

  • Project team:

    Feifel, Silke (Project leader)

  • Funding:

    AiF

  • Start date:

    2010

  • End date:

    2012

  • Project partners:

    Süddeutsches Kunststoffzentrum - KFE gGmbH; Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Abteilung Holzbiologie und Holzprodukte

  • Research group:

    Sustainability and environment

Project description

This research project is aiming at the advancement of a particular evaluation instrument concerning the life cycle management of WPC, which was developed within the research project AiF project no. 14987 N. Based on the previous work, the evaluation instrument will be enhanced in such a way that it may serve plastics processors to put into practice a comprehensive life cycle management with respect to a concrete, market-relevant product with a defined product benefit.

The plastic processing industry, especially SMEs, shall be enabled to realize a sustainability benchmarking of their products. This starts by defining a target value using the most sustainable product as of today as the point of reference. The benchmarking is accomplished by comparing the plastic product in the context of a sustainability evaluation with a non-plastic product in the market.

For this purpose, all phases of the life cycle (production, use and disposal) must be analyzed in detail from an ecological and an economic perspective. The comparison is done using the example of terrace flooring which is at present the most important application of WPC (compared to solid wood of different types of wood and wood qualities).

The tasks of ITAS in this project are:

  1. The specification of the parameters for the analysis of the life cycle assessment and of the life cycle costing in co-operation with all project partners for the case of terrace flooring.
  2. Performing a life cycle assessment for solid wood terrace flooring including the generation of all data needed and the calculation of the LCI.

The download of the final report is available at SKZ (keyword "FV 336").

Publications


2015
Journal Articles
Feifel, S.; Stübs, O.; Seibert, K.; Hartl, J.
Comparing wood polymer composites with solid wood: the case of sustainability of terrace flooring
2015. European journal of wood and wood products, 73 (6), 829–836. doi:10.1007/s00107-015-0953-6
2014
Journal Articles
Feifel, S.; Seibert, K.; Schmid, M.; Stübs, O.
Ökologische Bilanzierung vonTerrassendielen. Teil 2: Dielen aus Bilinga und Kiefer
2014. Holztechnologie, 55 (1), 45–50 
2013
Journal Articles
Feifel, C.; Seibert, K.; Schmid, M.; Stübs, O.
Ökologische Bilanzierung von Terassendielen. Teil 1: Dielen aus Wood-Polymer-Composites
2013. Holztechnologie, 54 (6), 37–42 
Conference Papers
Stübs, O.; Feifel, S.; Schmid, M.
Life cycle management for WPC producers and manufacturers
2013. Proceedings of the 6th International Wood Fibre Polymer Composite Symposium (WPC 2013), Biarritz, F, September 23-24, 2013 Bordeaux : Institut Technologique FCBA, 2013 
Presentations
Kressirer, S.; Schmid, M.; Feifel, S.; Stübs, O.
Life cycle management for WPC manufacturers
2013. 5. Deutscher Wood-Plastic-Composites (WPC 2013) Kongress, Köln, 10.-11. Dezember 2013 
Stübs, O.; Feifel, S.; Schmid, M.
Life cycle management for WPC producers and manufacturers
2013. 6th International Wood Fibre Polymer Composite Symposium (WPC 2013), Biarritz, F, September 23-24, 2013 
2012
Conference Papers
Schmid, M.; Feifel, S.; Seibert, K.; Stübs, O.
Natural fibre reinforced plastics and solid wood - a comparison of terrace floorings using LCA
2012. 18th SETAC LCA Case Study Symp., Copenhagen, DK, November 26-28, 2012 Transparencies publ.online 
Reports/Preprints
Stübs, O.; Feifel, S.; Krause, A.
Weiterentwicklung einer Methode zum Lebenszyklusmanagement. Nachhaltigkeits-Benchmarking von WPC
2012. Schlussbericht zum BMWi geförderten Vorhaben 16379N ’Nachhaltigkeits-Benchmarking von WPC’ Würzburg : Das Süddeutsche Kunststoff-Zentrum e.V., 2012 
Presentations
Schmid, M.; Feifel, S.; Seibert, K.; Stübs, O.
Natural fibre reinforced plastics and solid wood - a comparison of terrace floorings using LCA
2012. 18th SETAC Europe LCA Case Study Symp., Copenhagen, DK, November 26-28, 2012 

Contact

Dipl.-Ing. Silke Feifel
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS)
P.O. Box 3640
76021 Karlsruhe
Germany