Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Plywood and it's Life Cycle


Plywood is used heavily in construction as building material, as well as for structural support for many everyday items. There is a large demand for an item this versatile. It is usually created with a blend of tropical woods, Birch, Pine, Cedar, Douglas, and SpruceFir. The woods are cut into blocks and are steamed in a 194 degree water. Once they are put through a lathe, they are trimmed to 3 millimeters. The pieces are then covered with resin and are put together. To put them together, they are heated and hot pressed at 212 degrees. However this is where the faults began, they are transported final sanding and trimming where a immersive amount of CO2 is put into the air. Since it is mostly shipped from China and transported to North America, a lot of fuel is used and  loosed into the atmosphere having a negative impact on the environment. This is why plywood should be recycled, instead of being burned and releasing more toxins into the air. This is being improved as Life-Cycle Assessment and Life-Cycle Inventory work together to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases as products, such as plywood, is produced. 

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA): is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from cradle to grave (i.e., from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling).

Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI): study provides the measurement of the material flows, energy flows, and environmental releases for the production of a defined amount of a product. LCI is also known as a cradle-to-gate or gate-to-gate study, and is the building block for performing an LCA.
http://www.galvanizeit.org/sustainable-development-and-hot-dip-galvanizing/what-is-sustainable-development/life-cycle-inventory-and-life-cycle-assessment


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