Life Cycle Analysis for Glass bottle versus plastic bottle

by: Mirjam Visser, 2010-07-27 09:06:02 UTC

mineral water bottled in belgium or italy and transported to shanghai. My first thought about the difficulty to design for sustainability. of course it is ridiculous to ship water over the globe but in the chinese dont like drinking carbonated water so one needs to do something. So what to buy plastic or glass bottles?

Scenario: glass bottle
Last Updated: 2013-02-22 02:51:29 UTC
Base scenario for the LCA. You can clone scenarios and create more to compare with.

Materials used in the product

Item	Cost per unit	Unit	Quantity	Total Cost
Tap water, at user/CH S	0.0	kg	1.5	0.0
Packaging glass, green, at plant/DE S	0.102	kg	0.45	0.0459
Aluminium, production mix, at plant/RER S	2.801	kg	0.006	0.016806
Total Cost				0.062706
Weight Adjustment		[kg]	0.0
Total Weight		[kg]	1.96

Processing Steps

Item	Cost per unit	Unit	Quantity	Total Cost
Rolling aluminium foil	0.186	kg	0.006	0.001116
Tempering, flat glass/RER S (kg)	0.044	kg	0.45	0.0198
Total Cost				0.020916

Transport

Item	Cost per unit	Unit	Quantity	Total Cost / [1000 kg]
Bulk carrier	0.005	tkm	Ghent, Belgium -> Shanghai, China 9037.29	45.1865
Total Cost				0.08856554

Usage Patterns over the lifetime of the object

Lifetime [years]	0.0
Usage per day [times/day]	1
Usage per time [hours/time]	0
Usage per week [days/week]	0
Electrical Wattage [kWatt]	0

Consumables per use of the product

Item	Cost per unit	Unit	Quantity	Total Cost / [time]
Total Cost				0.0

Disposal, Recycling and Waste Treatment

Item	Cost per unit	Unit	Quantity	Total Cost
glass/RER S	0.0	kg	0.45	0.0
aluminium/RER S	0.0	kg	0.006	0.0
Total Cost				0.0
Total Weight			1.96 kg

Phase	Total Eco Costs [Euro]	Carbon Footprint [kg CO2 equiv.]	Recipe Total [Pt]	Recipe Human Health [Pt]	Recipe Eco Tox [Pt]	Recipe Mat Repl [Pt]	Recipe Ionising Radiation [Pt]	Bees Total [mPt]	Bees Ecotoxicity [mPt]
Materials	0.062706	0.29521	0.03027	0.011724	0.008196	0.0099	6E-06	32.406	0.000642
Processing	0.020916	0.11107	0.010404	0.004242	0.002358	0.003798	0	3.396	6E-06
Transport	0.088566	0.19484	0.017713	0.017713	0	0	0	0	0
Consumption	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Disposal	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	13.05	0.0009
Total	0.37537	1.4765	0.14942	0.074716	0.030554	0.043698	6E-06	98.852	0.003548

Scenario: Plastic bottle
Last Updated: 2012-01-13 13:14:19 UTC
Base scenario for the LCA. You can clone scenarios and create more to compare with.