Avaliação do ciclo de vida de discos de vinil

Abstract

PVC is the second most consumed thermoplastic worldwide, but the life cycle assessment (LCA) of PVC-based products is still a rare topic of scientific publications. There are only a few environmental studies on long-term lasting PVC products. In this work, the potential environmental impacts of the vinyl record (LP) life cycle were evaluated. Two distinct simulations comprising LP disposal by landfilling and incineration were carried out to describe the eco-indicators for postconsumer treatments considered to be critical upon a circular economy basis. Thus, the LCA of LPs was carried out using the ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (E) method to assess potential environmental impacts involving PVC resin production, electroplating and thermo-pressing, packaging, and disposal. Three impact categories were studied using the openLCA software: global warming potential, human toxicity, and fossil resources scarcity, with the functional unit considered as 1000 LPs containing 150 kg of PVC compound, 125 kg of paperboard, and 10 kg of PE. In the PVC resin formulation, the main environmental bottlenecks were the tin and soybean oil used as primary and secondary stabilizers, respectively. The electroplating and thermomoulding step had the higher impacts on the evaluated categories than the PVC resin formulation step, except in terms of fossil resource scarcity, for which the two steps performed equally. Cardboard packaging was the process with the largest impacts on all categories, followed by vinyl chloride production, extrusion and thermoforming processes and PE film packaging production. The landfill end-of-life of LPs exhibited lower eco-indicators than incineration, except when evaluated for human toxicity. It was concluded that landfilling is subtly preferable to incineration. Overall, LCA studies of PVC resin synthesis, the manufacture of LPs and their final disposal still need to cover several other considerations, with no definitive solution existing for the environmental impacts caused by disposal of vinyl records.