Product Life Cycle Assessment

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Product Life Cycle Assessment

Product Life Cycle Assessment

Product Life Cycle Assessment

 

The product life cycle assessment (LCA) refers to the assessment of potential environmental impacts caused by the investments in and outputs of raw material acquisition, manufacturing, delivery and sales, use, and waste processing and recycling stages of products and services. Corporations can use LCA to assess all the impacts on the environment created by products “from cradle to grave”, such as contributions to global warming and damage to the ozone. The assessment results can be applied to products, manufacturing and services to achieve the purpose of continuously providing environmentally friendly products and reducing energy and resource usage during product manufacturing.



Wistron complies with ISO 14040 and 14044 life cycle assessment standards in the life cycle assessments of handheld devices and laptop computers. The scope of the system boundaries has been defined according to the product category rules (PCR) announced for integrated computers by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration and for IT equipment by the EU Environmental Footprint Category. The boundaries have been defined as cradle to grave, which includes raw material, raw material transportation, manufacturing, product delivery, use, and waste processing stages. The Simapro software is used to conduct the computational analysis to obtain the environmental impact assessment results and carbon footprint of the product. In the future, Wistron will continue to expand LCA coverage for products, establish an operating procedure for LCA, train our employees through e-learning classes, and design low-carbon products based on improvements proposed by LCA analysis for carbon hot spots.

Impact category Unit Environmental impact assessment result
Handheld devices (Malaysia Plant) Handheld devices (Kunshan Plant) Laptop computers (Chengdu Plant)
Climate change kg CO2 eq 48.4 48.2 138
Stratospheric ozone depletion kg CFC-11 eq 2.53E-05 2.5E-05 7.59E-05
Ionizing radiation kBq Co-60 eq 5.44 5.49 21.4
Ozone formation, Human health kgNOx eq 0.138 0.142 0.363
Fine Particulate matter formation kg PM2.5 eq 0.114 0.11 0.303
Ozone formation, Terrestrial ecosystem kgNOx eq 0.14 0.144 0.371
Terrestrial acidification kg SO2 eq 0.198 0.198 0.573
Freshwater eutrophication kg P eq 0.0614 0.0605 0.142
Marine eutrophication kg N eq 0.00545 0.00539 0.0302
Terrestrial ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DB eq 146 146 1230
Freshwater ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DB eq 26.2 26.2 54.7
Marine ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DB eq 34.5 34.5 71.5
Human carcinogenic toxicity kg 1,4-DB eq 4.22 4.19 14.5
Human non-carcinogenic toxicity kg 1,4-DB eq 410 409 810
land use m2 a crop eq 3.15 3.06 14.2
Water consumption m3 0.899 0.866 2.73
Mineral resource scarcity kg Cu eq 1.39 1.39 3.57
Fossil resource scarcity kg oil eq 12.3 12 35.3



Analysis of carbon footprints at every stage of the lifecycle

Product scope Raw materials Transportation of raw material Manufacturing Delivery Product use Waste after use Total carbon emissions
Handheld devices (Malaysia Plant) 37.6 0.267 3.75 0.0168 5.62 0.311 47.60
Handheld devices (Kunshan Plant) 37.6 0.142 3.64 0.00616 5.63 0.311 47.30
Laptop computers (Chengdu Plant) 101 0.328 1.90 0.423 29.5 2.75 136
  • Unit: kg CO2 eq