Page 321 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

4.6 Illustration of the Phase Impact Assessment by Practical Example 305

For a deduction of optimisation potentials a sectoral analysis on the level of
the impact indicators following characterisation is very useful. Figure 4.4 shows
the sectoral analysis of the variants 1-l-carton system and 1-l-PET-system using as
example the impact category greenhouse effect (now climate change) related to the
fU. A prerequisite of a sector analysis is the modelling in the inventory in a way,
that environmental loads can be assigned to individual phases of the life cycle. In
view of an optimisation analysis during the interpretation (see Chapter 5) such
information is very valuable.
Figure 4.4 serves exclusively as an illustration of the use of a sectoral analysis
on the level of impact indicators. It will be integrated into the discussion of the
component interpretation.

4.6.4
Normalisation

In every study the selected bases of normalisation are to be described. In the
example study 383) the normalisation is based on the specific contribution and
resident equivalents (see Section 4.3.3.1).

For the normalisation accomplished here, the impact related aggregated
environmental loads are represented as ‘specific contribution’ by means of
resident equivalents. These indicate an average contribution to the respective
impact category per inhabitant in a given geographical reference area per
annum. Thus information on relevance of individual categories can be
obtained.
For the normalisation accomplished here on selected examples the envi-
ronmental load of Germany and Western Europe is consulted as reference
value. The data consulted for the normalisation are provided in Table 4.30.
Total load values and a quantity per inhabitant – corresponding to one resi-
dent equivalents (REQs) – of Germany and Western Europe respectively are
specified.
Results of the classification, which initially refer to the fU as defined in
the goal and scope definition, are scaled by the total consumption of the
regarded beverages in Germany with respect to Western Europe. The basis
for Germany is an annual consumption of fruit juices and fruit nectars of
4555 million litres. The source for the derivation of these values was (Tetra
Pak, 2005, 2006).
The results of the described derivations are specific contributions of the
examined options to the respective categories. For a representation of REQs
no sectoral analyses is applied to the results of the selected categories
because of a higher interest in the overall contributions of the impact
categories (see Figure 4.5).

383) IFEU (2006).