Output details

Life cycle assessments of biodegradable, commercial biopolymers - A critical review

Although described as a review, this paper contains substantial original work in every section: Life Cycle Analysis data is drawn from a wide range of industrial and academic literature sources, and re-analysed in this paper to enable a direct and fair comparison between them to be made for the first time. The problem being tackled here is that environmental assessments of biopolymers reported in the literature are very disparate. The mutually contradictory underlying assumptions are examined, and numerical data are re-calculated using additional information from other sources. The literature of this subject area is dominated by “soft” and non-rigorous arguments and analysis: re-analysis of the kind offered here in this paper is original and points to an important research direction for the field.

The detailed expertise in polymer manufacturing embodied here contributes to the research capability platform for the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability (grant no. EP/I033351/1, total value £5.2M, Cambridge share £3.6M, a 5 year, four university, multi-partner programme developing the knowledge tools and techniques to facilitate the transition towards a more sustainable industrial system). The comparative environmental impacts of biopolymers and petroleum-derived polymers reported in the paper were used in defining subsequent projects with Dyson (GBP12,375; TS/L001381/1) and Toyota (GBP12,375; TS/L001381/1).