A life-cycle assessment of household refrigerators in China

Xiao, Rufeng; Zhang, You; Liu, Xin; Yuan, Zengwei

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.031

Cited by 51 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Third, the after‐sale stages such as use and disposal requires attention. Taking a household refrigerator for example, its use could be the dominant contributor to the life cycle environmental impacts, accounting for 60–70% of the total values of most impact categories (Foelster et al., ; Xiao et al., ). As “smart home” becomes a developmental trend for major household appliance manufacturers, a typical embodiment of smart home is smart energy management, which is achieved by IoT enabled environments and smart scheduling (Collotta & Pau, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The scope of an LCA includes the system boundary and the defined level of detail, depending on the subject and the objective (ISO, ). Combining with the previous LCA studies on household refrigerators (Monfared, Furberg, & Palm, ; Xiao, Zhang, Liu, & Yuan, ), the functional unit (FU) is defined as a 107 kg air‐cooling multidoor refrigerator, the specifications of which are illustrated in in Supporting Information S1 on the Journal's website. The selection of the FU is in accordance with the purpose of this article, that is, comparing the environmental performance of two manufacturing paradigms in terms of their outputs.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…to air), marine ecotoxicity potential (METP, in kg 1,4‐DB eq), marine eutrophication potential (MEP, in kg N eq), metal depletion potential (MDP, in kg Cu eq), photochemical ozone formation potential (POFP, in kg NO x eq), stratospheric ozone depletion potential (ODP, in kg CFC‐11 eq), terrestrial acidification potential (TAP, in kg SO 2 eq), and terrestrial ecotoxicity potential (TETP, in kg 1,4‐DB eq). These impact categories have been extensively applied in evaluating the environmental performance of household refrigerators (Monfared et al., ; Xiao et al., ), and cover the majority of environmental effects. They can provide vigorous support for holistically comparing the environmental impacts of one refrigerator from the two models.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prompting product modularity (Foelster et al, 2016;Xiao et al, 2015). As "smart home" becomes a developmental trend for major household appliance manufacturers, a typical embodiment of smart home is smart energy management, which is achieved by IoT enabled environments and smart scheduling (Collotta & Pau, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can smart factories bring environmental benefits to their products?: A case study of household refrigerators

Zhang

Guo

2019

J of Industrial Ecology

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Smart factories have been widely adopted as a new manufacturing paradigm, in which the state‐of‐the‐art technologies are introduced to improve relevant processes. Yet, whether smart factories affect the environmental performance remains unknown. In this article, we examine the environmental performance of a smart refrigerator factory by comparing the environmental impacts of its product to a similar model that is produced in a traditional fashion. This article quantifies and verifies the theoretically predicted impacts of this smart factory on the individual processes. Though the overall differences in the two models are quite minor, we find that this smart factory can notably reduce the values of most impact categories associated with the parts and refrigerator production; the reduction in the value of climate change is 33%. Owing to higher material efficiency—raw material savings in this smart factory contributes to the greatest reductions in most categorized impacts—the contribution to the reduction of climate change is 39%. Yet, all categorized impacts of procurement and delivery are increased due to product personalization and direct delivery. The results of sensitivity analysis show that promoting product modularity, adopting clean energy such as wind power can further improve the environmental performance of the selected refrigerator. The introduction of auxiliary equipment and systems slightly increases the value of each category; yet their impacts are negligible compared to their benefits as facilitating production efficiency. Based on the quantitative results, recommendations are given to improve the environmental performance of smart factory, including optimizing current strategies and promoting horizontal and end‐to‐end integration.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Can smart factories bring environmental benefits to their products?: A case study of household refrigerators

Zhang

Guo

2019

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…The main method to quantify those impacts is life cycle assessment (LCA) according to the ISO 14040 series ( ISO, 2006 , b ). For what concerns the area household appliances, the method has been applied since the end of the 90’s already in the assessment of electric and electronic devices, investigating most of the time specific types of appliances (see review paper of Subramanian and Yung, 2016 , or studies such as Tekawa et al., 1997 , Atlantic Consulting and IPU, 1998 , Hischier and Baudin, 2010 , Lee and Tansel, 2012 , Javani et al., 2013 , Elduque et al., 2014 , Xiao et al., 2015 , Subramanian and Yung, 2017 , Favi et al., 2018 , or Zhang et al., 2019 ). On a more comprehensive and thus device-independent level, to the best of author’s knowledge, only few studies have been published so far.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of household appliances in Europe and scenarios for their impact reduction

Hischier¹,

Reale

Castellani³

et al. 2020

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Assessing the environmental impact due to consumption of goods and services is a pivotal step towards achieving the sustainable development goal related to responsible production and consumption (i.e. SDG 12). Household appliances plays a crucial role and should be assessed in a systemic manner, namely considering all life cycle stages, technological efficiency, and affluence aspects. The present study assess the impact of such household appliances used in Europe, and tests scenarios of potential impact reduction at various scales. Life cycle assessment is applied to 14 different household appliances (ranging from dishwashers to television devices) selected to build a set of representative products, based on their economic value and diffusion in households in Europe. Related impacts are calculated with the Environmental Footprint method for calculating a Consumer Footprint “appliances” for the baseline year 2010. A number of scenarios encompassing eco-solutions on a technical level, changes in consumption pattern, behavioral changes, as well as the combination of all these aspects are run to estimate the Consumer Footprint related to household appliances for the year 2030, compared against this baseline scenario. The baseline Consumer Footprint is confirming the importance of the use phase in leading the impacts in almost all impact categories. Testing different scenarios concludes that there is a reduction of the impact for most of the categories (with up to 67% for the ozone depletion potential, and still around 35% for the global warming potential), while two of the here examined impact categories (i.e. land-use and mineral resource depletion) show an overall potential that is even negative – i.e. the results of all scenarios are higher than the ones of the 2010 baseline scenario. The increase in purchase and use of such appliances may offset energy efficiency benefits in some of the examined categories. Hence, the assessment of sustainability of appliances consumption should always include several scales, from the efficiency of the products (micro scale), to the improvement of the energy mix (meso scale), up to accounting for socio-economic drivers and patterns of consumption affecting the overall appliances stock (macro scale).

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Indicators for establishing and assessing waste management systems in developing countries: A holistic approach to sustainability and business opportunities

Ikhlayel¹

2018

Bus Strat Dev

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Waste management is a pressing issue for sustainable development, particularly in developing countries. Its urgent nature is an outcome of the increasing waste produced and the poor waste management in several developing countries. Waste is associated with negative environmental impacts, dangers to public health, social acceptability, and economic aspects. Several factors exacerbate the waste problem: inadequate waste disposal methods, mixing portions of waste electrical and electronic equipment components with municipal waste, and informal recycling. Other factors are a lack of awareness of the toxic nature of hazardous waste and limited legislation to regulate and control the disposal of hazardous waste. Focusing on municipal waste and waste electrical and electronic equipment, this article classifies the levels of waste management and proposes 26 indicators for assessing and enhancing waste management systems. The purpose of this research is to make a contribution to accelerating the transition to sustainable development in developing countries and to highlight business opportunities.

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A life-cycle assessment of household refrigerators in China

Cited by 51 publications

References 18 publications

Can smart factories bring environmental benefits to their products?: A case study of household refrigerators

Can smart factories bring environmental benefits to their products?: A case study of household refrigerators

Environmental impacts of household appliances in Europe and scenarios for their impact reduction

Indicators for establishing and assessing waste management systems in developing countries: A holistic approach to sustainability and business opportunities

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