Life cycle assessment of beverage cans

Abstract

LCA (Life cycle assessment) is a tool to evaluate quantitatively the resource consumption, the environmental loads and impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. The purpose of the present work is to establish how to evaluate the effect of recycling of materials and how to predict the environmental loads of new materials by a prospective application of LCA. Beverage cans were chosen as an evaluating object for LCA in which the recycling rate of a material of a steel or aluminum can was changed. A fictitious process for a stainless steel can was also analyzed in order to search the feasibility of the new material for a beverage can. In the absence of recycling, the energy consumption and the CO2, SOx, NOx emissions for the aluminum can are much higher than those for the steel product. The recycling of materials changes the situation, because the environmental loads for the aluminum can are reduced much higher than those for the steel can. As for the stainless can, it was shown that the environmental loads for the system are comparable to the conventional beverage cans when the can is decreased in thickness and fully recycled. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the decrease in environmental loads can be achieved by the combination of the selection of recyclable materials and the development of production technology.