A Study on Product Life Cycle Management to Create a Sustainable Society

摘要

The industries of a sustainable society have to not only comply with market needs and customer requirements, but also utilize natural resources efficiently and execute countermeasures for environmental issues. As a methodology to realize the sustainable society, there is the life cycle management that deals with the whole life cycle from mining of natural resources, production of the materials, development and manufacturing of a product, use and disposal of the product, and recycling of the resources. The purpose of this study is to propose the methodology of the life cycle management of an automotive part (bumper) to minimize the global warming gas emission due to the part, and to validate the methodology through actual example. As the study approach, first, mechanical recycling process of the plastic bumper was surveyed including its energy consumption. The recycling processes were energy recovery processes from the bumpers incineration and mechanical recycling processes of the bumper. The second, the global warming gas emissions of each recycling processes were assessed with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Finally, the combination of bumper recycling processes that could minimize global warming gas emissions was considered. As the energy recovery process, three processes were taken up from the treatment of the bumpers of the disposed cars based on the Japanese automotive recycling legislation. Most of the End of Live Vehicle (ELV)'s bumpers are incinerated to recover energy as Automobile Shredder Residues (ASR). As for mechanical recycle process, the ELV bumper recycling to a new car bumper conducted locally in Hiroshima Japan was taken up. Japan was divided into five regions. Global warming gas emissions from each recycling process were evaluated with LCA in each region. As a result, it has been found that the amount of global warming gas emissions from the mechanical recycling was less or more than that of the energy recovery depending on the energy recovery efficiency and the transportation distance of the recovered material. It became possible to select the process that minimizes the amount of global warming emissions in respective and all regions as well.