A Methodical Approach for Systematic Life Cycle Assessment of Wood‐Based Furniture

Abstract

Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for furniture focus on single pieces of furniture and use a bottom-up approach based on their bill of materials (BOM) to build up the data inventories. This approach does not ensure completeness regarding material and energy fluxes and representativeness regarding the product portfolio. Integrating material and energy fluxes collected at company level into product LCA (top-down approach) over-rides this drawback. This article presents a method for systematic LCA of industrially produced furniture that merges the top-down approach and bottom-up approach. The developed method assigns data collected at the company level to the different products while, at the same time, considering that wood-based furniture is a complex product. Hence, several classifications to reduce the complexity to a manageable level have been developed. Simultaneously, a systematic calculation routine was established. The practical implementation of the developed method for systematic LCA is carried out in a case study within the German furniture industry. The system boundary was set in accord with the EN 15804 specification cradle-to-gate-with-options. The analysis therefore includes the manufacturing phase supplemented by an end-of-life scenario. The case study shows that the manufacturing of semifinished products (especially wood-based panels and metal components) as well as the electric energy demand in furniture manufacturing account for a notable share of the environmental impacts. A sensitivity analysis indicates that up to roughly 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions are not recorded when conducting an LCA based on a BOM instead of applying the developed approach. Keywords: classification complex wood products industrial ecology life cycle assessment (LCA) systematic data calculation top-down and bottom-up approach Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflict to declare.(2010) assessed, 6.5 million cubic meters m 3 of particleboard were used for the production of furniture in Germany in 2007. These numbers illustrate the importance of the furniture sector and the need for reliable life cycle assessment (LCA) data of furniture.

Measuring the sustainability of wood consumption at the household level in Indonesia: Case study in Bogor, Indonesia

“…This is because measuring the level of consumption on a household scale is not easy (Hsiang et al 2017). Although it is difficult, it can be done through understanding the characteristics of the product (Wenker et al 2017) and also the proportion of its use (Kayo et al 2018). The characteristics of wood products can be approached by considering the conversion factor of the use of wood that has been built so far as stated by Briggs (1994) and Husch et al (2003).…”

Environmental Impact Assessment of Wood Use in Japan through 2050 Using Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment

“…; Wenker et al. ), paper (Ghose and Carrasco ; Achachlouei and Moberg ), and waste wood (Morris ). To obtain a broad understanding of the role of wood use in relationship to various environmental issues, it is important to examine wood‐related usages from the viewpoint of large spatial and temporal scales.…”

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful method for the comprehensive and quantitative assessment of a variety of environmental impacts, and this method is widely used for resources, products, and services. Several researchers have conducted LCAs of individual wood products and their applications, while focusing on issues such as energy (Bright and Strømman 2009;Wolf et al 2016;Røyne et al 2017), building construction (Jönsson et al 1997;Börjesson and Gustavsson 2000), furniture (Iritani et al 2015;Wenker et al 2017), paper (Ghose and Carrasco 2013;Achachlouei and Moberg 2015), and waste wood (Morris 2017). To obtain a broad understanding of the role of wood use in relationship to various environmental issues, it is important to examine wood-related usages from the viewpoint of large spatial and temporal scales.…”

Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Wood Use in Civil Engineering in Japan Based on Life-Cycle Assessment

“…Many previous studies have conducted LCA targeting of the GHG balances of individual wood products and applications, including buildings [3][4][5], furniture [6,7], paper [8,9], energy [10][11][12][13][14], and civil engineering [15][16][17]. In addition, several LCA studies have covered multiple or whole wood applications [18][19][20][21].…”

“…Many prior studies [3,7,16,27,[34][35][36][37] assumed the biogenic carbon (CO 2 ) balance of wood in the LCA and the CFs to be carbon-neutral. In other words, they had no effect on the CO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere; thus, the biogenic carbon balance was considered zero.…”