Bloody Plastic!!
No, this isn’t a complaint about supermarket bags but an innovative technology that can generate bioplastics from the blood of animals.
Our Tauranga based consultant Wymond Symes was also at the LCANZ conference and found this innovative technology highlighted challenges for consideration when undertaking a life cycle assessment (LCA). As part of understanding the value of their technology, the University of Waikato and Novatein assessed the environmental impacts of the product through an LCA. Blood is typically a waste product or at the very most a low value by-product of meat processing. In an LCA the inventors were faced with a decision on how to allocate the environmental impacts of the raw material i.e. the blood. The production of the blood (i.e. the growth of the animal) has an environmental impact and some of this must be allocated to the bioplastic if it is to be compared to petrochemical based plastics. This is important as different methods can give very varying results. For example:
- Considering the raw material as an equal value component of the animal and allocating on mass alone, the GWP of the bioplastic was determined to be over 14kg CO2e per kg plastic.
- If however allocation was applied based on economic value of the raw material as a percentage of the value of the rest of the animal, the GWP was nearer 2kg CO2e/kg.
Other allocation scenarios were also modeled and gave quite different outcomes. The take home message is to carefully consider allocation when undertaking an LCA and ensure decisions made align with the purpose of the study.