Page 362 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

346 5 Life Cycle Interpretation, Reporting and Critical Review

determined that more than half of this environmental impact is caused by
the production of PA granulates despite its minor mass fraction.
A significant environmental load of 3–14% in the priority categories is due
to the energy-intensive production of pre-forms and PET bottles.
As for the beverage carton, the sectors filling and distribution are of minor
importance (in each case, below 5%). The closure production has a larger
contribution in the category summer smog only (18%). The same is valid
for the production of secondary and tertiary packing with 14% for summer
smog. The production of paper labels contributes very little (∼2%).
The relevance of the sector ‘disposal and recycling’ varies strongly by
category. The contribution is lowest (2%) for fossil resource consumption
and highest for the greenhouse effect (29%).
Credit entries are quite important. In the priority categories, the amount of
the credit entry corresponds to 19–26% of the system burdens. Secondary
materials and substituted energy contribute more or less evenly.

5.6.4
Completeness, Consistency and Data Quality

In the inventory analysis, data bases and data quality are thoroughly described for
every data record. In the interpretation, all included inventory data, computations
for the impact assessment as well as methodological aspects are again analysed
and commented on.

Relevant information and data for the interpretation of the packaging sys-
tems examined in this study were present. According to estimates of the
practitioners, result-relevant data gaps are not included.
A certain restriction of data representativeness is caused by specifications
concerning the packing of the examined PET bottles. Since for this segment
no data of the total market are available, market patterns were referred to.
In order to allow a maximum reliability of results for a system comparison
with the beverage carton, rather light PET bottles were analysed or weight-
optimised variants were examined by sensitivity analyses.
Altogether, the data quality and data symmetry of this LCA can be classified
as good to very good.
Allocation rules, system boundaries and calculations concerning impact
assessment were uniformly and similarly applied for all examined packaging
systems and scenarios based on those systems.