Lezione 20: The environment Flashcards
What are the most consumed materials?
Within metals, the most used is steel: 10x more than others. Also, construction materials such as concrete and wood are the most heavily used materials. The consumption level are concerning: steel doubles every 18 years for example
What is life cycle assessment?
Energy and materials are consumed at every point in.a product’s life cycle. Life cycle assessment is used to evaluate the eco-impact throughout all cycles of a product’s life. LCA attempts to identify and qualify all environmental stressors caused by a product’s life from beginning to end
What are embodied energy Hm and CO2 footprint?
Embodied energy Hm (MJ/kg) of a material is the energy that must be committed to create 1 kg of usable material.
The CO2 footprint is the associated release of CO2 in kg/kg. Energy consumption and CO2 emissions are nearly equivalent when evaluating the eco-impact of a product..
To do this, an input-output analysis is used.
How does material selection for eco design work?
An environmentally responsible design begins by identifying which phase of the life cycle of the product makes the largest impact. The eco impact of the use phase has nothing to do with a material’s embodied energy.
