Lifecycle Analysis
Background
The content of analysis will examine paper. It will look at the harvesting of the materials, production, distribution, and finally the waste. This lifecycle analysis is to explain a consumer product’s life from production to waste. This is to show the environmental effects that the products has during its life time. A few of the environmental impacts that will be focused on is resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions. These were chosen because of the chain reaction they can cause. Greenhouse gases are known to be linked to climate change, which is a global problem so the impacts of these emissions are on a very large scale. Resource depletion is another problem because more than one species rely on forest. Therefore, the depletion of it is not only bad to humans but the other organisms that use it for their survival. If this resource was to be completely used up, then it could lead to a loss of biodiversity which could be bad for the local ecosystem. In addition, since some ecosystems are linked together the loss of one could have a huge effect on another causing a domino effect. LCA Inventory Trees are a good source of paper; there are other materials that can work but for the scope of this paper I’ll only focus on trees. As described in figure 1, the first step is to harvest the trees. To do this, usually heavy machinery or chainsaws are employed to do the cutting. But this process
According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 18 million acres of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year. Undeniably, the deteriorating environmental situation, the increasingly severe pollution of the atmosphere, and water, the severe damage to the living environment of wild animals and plants, the extinction of many species, the deforestation and the transitional mining of mineral resources caused contrary facts. Human existence and development have brought real and more serious potential threats. The scarcity of environmental resources is manifested gradually. As environmental issues are becoming a bottleneck restricting economic growth, it is imperative that lousy effect governed the environment.
About a million tons of paper are used every day around the world and 93% of it comes from trees. Half of municipal waste is paper. About 20,000,000 trees are cut annually. (Mittal, 2009) Trees are very important to the environment, cutting them is affecting the environment negatively. In a year for this task alone, we print a total of 2,700 pages of paper. 8 trees of 8-inch diameter and 45 feet produce 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper. 500 sheets of paper weights 5 pounds, which is about 1,000 to 2,000 sheets per tree. By saving 2,700 sheets of paper a year we will be saving a tree. (Schildgen,
“The Greenhouse Effect” or “Greenhouse gases” have become somewhat of scary concepts in relation to climate change. In fact, without the Greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the Earth would be 5F rather than the current average at 59F. Greenhouse gases are composed mostly of water vapor, but also carbon dioxide, methane, and certain types of clouds. These gases lie in the troposphere of the atmosphere and allows the shortwave radiation of the sun to pass through the atmosphere and warm the Earth’s surface as energy is absorbed, while the longwave radiation is delayed from being transmitted back into space through greenhouse gases. The waves are absorbed by greenhouse gases and bounced back to the Earth’s surface, conserving
Through the economic perspective there are also benefits present in going green, an obvious benefit of green actions is savings. Going paperless saves you money when you pay bills online. Likewise, if you use compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), you save money on energy costs. {3} According to Energy Star, each fluorescent bulb you replace an incandescent bulb with will use 75 percent less energy. If you replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb with a 25-watt CFL, you will save over $100 per year, based on U.S. Department of Energy figures {4}. The greatest beneficiary of these changes is the environment as there are several key benefits to the environment if you recycle and reuse products rather than buy new. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) {5}, recycled products use less energy to produce than items produced from raw materials because the energy costs associated with collecting the raw materials have been eliminated or reduced. It can therefore reduce pollution and help conserve the natural resources. When trees are not harvested for paper products, the carbon dioxide sequestered within the plant material is not released into the
Imagine a world without fossil fuels, greenhouse emissions and global warming. Cosmic radiant energy? What? No natural gas, oil, coal, or any other fuel used to power industrial machines? Free energy? Oh! That will never happen and the “Captains of Industry” will make sure of it! An innovator of a modern era was reawakening theories of ancient man. While many people did not support Nikola Tesla, his “Green Energy” invention was brilliant; it was a way to save the planet and free mankind from the clutches of the Big Oil companies.
Taking a “less harm” approach is often the first step in evaluating the impact of a product 's life cycle on the environment beginning from the abstraction of raw materials, manufacturing, production, consumption, and ending with dematerialization. Although, “no one tool is adequate to the task of measuring
Lean is an idea or process of creating value for customers by reducing waist. The increase of production output with less labour. The purpose is to be able to fulfil customers’ needs with less cost.
The world is facing a new kind of threat to environmental security. As humanity continues to neglect and abuse the environment our future generations will be facing severe environmental hardships. Humankind is the biggest danger to environmental security. According to the U.S Census Bureau as of October 2016 the most populated country in the world is China with the population of 1, 373,541,248 people (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). It is not a surprise that China is also one of the biggest pollution contributors due to its great population number. Air pollution is one of the biggest threat to the environment created by human and China is known to be the world’s deadliest country for outdoor air pollution.
One major resource we have been using for centuries is paper. Because of this, the pulp industry has boomed and trees and forests have been cut in order to supply the demand. Clear cutting forests not only supplies mast amounts of wood and paper, but it also allows
The consumption of some goods and services results to ecological degradation more than we may realize. The things that we purchase contribute directly or indirectly to pollution, climate change, resources depletion and biodiversity loss. Ecological degradation refers to the “deterioration in environmental quality from ambient concentrations of pollutants and other activities and processes such as improper land use and natural disasters” (OECD, 1997). Ecological degradation is in most cases a result of socioeconomically, institutional and technological activities. The resources that are affected include water, soil and air. The degradation also impacts our wildlife,
In contemporary society, environmental protection has aroused widespread concern all over the world. ‘Environmental sustainability is a key issue for human societies throughout the 21st century’s world’ (Charles Vlek & Linda Steg, 2007, pg1). It is inevitable that some natural disasters occur, which causes damage to the environment, but human activity is another main reason for environmental destruction. With the development of technology and economy, a increasing number of human activities tend to be conducted in the natural environment, which hasten the rise of consumption. Ecologists note that the environment supplies many “goods and services”for human beings (de Groot et al., 2002). Bountiful nature offers people many valuable resources, so it is urgent that action is taken to restrict human activities due to the negative effects on the ecosystem. The illustration of different problems will be followed by solutions and evaluation respectively. It will be argued that different kinds of environmental problems have corresponding solutions.
Sandel is in reality right while he uncovers vices of the present day consumerist lifestyle. people change into mere consumers making the cult of intake and consumerism the only purpose of their existence. The immoderate intake ends in the adverse effect on the society. However, Sandel focuses his interest solely on moral problems.At the same time, the writer can pay little, if any interest to the effect of the overwhelming commercialization of the society at the surroundings. but, the negative impact of consumerism and commercialization of the modern-day society on the natural environment is plain. Human activities orientated on consumption and trade result in the destruction in their natural environment, extinction of many species, a decrease of biodiversity, worldwide climate alternate. these types of modifications are irrevocable and have a destructive effect, now not most effective on human lifestyles however they also affect on the existence at the complete planet. But, Sandel does not take these issues under consideration that reputedly weakens his argument due to the fact that moral problems only are not powerful enough to make a change in that kind of situation . The revelation of the negative effect of commercialization and consumerism on the natural environment could reveal that humans have a real chance of going extinct just like different species inhabiting the planet and this argument will be more potent, if the author tries to persuade the audience that human
Industrial farming has had effects on our environment in many ways. Due to large scale farms having to hold many animals, even millions, this comes with the responsibility of dealing with animal waste. A lot of this waste is either put into fields for nourishment or is released throughout the air and even dumped into lakes or oceans. This causes the water to then become unclean and useless. Making clean, drinkable water for families and other animals even harder to access. Woodlands are also cut down in order to produce human consumables that are then fed to more human consumables. For example, in Argentina many of the woodlands have been cut down to produce
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company Of Atlanta,Georgia.The company operates a franchised distribution system where the Coca-Cola company produces syrup concentrate which will alter be sold to various bottlers across the world. The company has many other beverages under it’s portfolio like Fanta,Pulpy Orange etc.
Quote A and Quote B show a connection between consumer’s behavior and the environmental changes. Thus, the unsustainable patterns of natural resources production and consumption are having social and environmental impacts in America. The urbanization and industrialization requires huge amount of resources for sustainability and development. Coal mining, coal processing, and iron and steel industries, and now natural gas particularly have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems due to the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, wasted product from these industry contaminated the land, air, and water while the act of mining destroy the land structure as well as the ecosystem. Furthermore, these acts create social problem and