Analysis of potential environmental improvements concerning transports of water-borne lacquer to Swedwood International

Abstract: This study is an environmental system analysis concerning the transport of water-borne lacquers from different lacquer suppliers to Swedwood furniture industries situated mainly in Eastern Europe. The aim of the study is to identify and calculate for environmental impacts to suggest possible improvement areas based on the achieved results. The possibilities of reducing water-content from the water-borne lacquers have been analysed and, together with a mapping of the present transportation distances and delivered lacquer quantities, three possible cases for each participating industry have been calculated for. In order to make comparisons, a mixing process of water-borne lacquers has been added each case. The first case represents the present situation, where the external production of water-borne lacquer is followed by the transportation of the ready-mixed lacquers. The second case shows the transportation of water-reduced lacquers followed by the internal mixing of lacquers within a Swedwood factory. In the third case, water-reduced lacquers are transported to a central mixing site in between the supplier and the Swedwood factory, where a mixing process follows before further transportation of already mixed lacquers. In order to facilitate the calculations of the impacts caused by different parameters, a model has been created, in which locations of the central mixing site also can be varied. The investigated environmental impact categories are global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential and photochemical oxidant creation potential. Energy use has also been studied. The ambition has been to follow the method and principles of life cycle assessment in the standard protocol ISO 14040-43. The results show that the production of water-borne lacquers contributes the most to the total environmental impact. By focusing on improvements in this field in a first step, subsequent improvement in other areas as a second step will have a greater effect. The type of electricity production varies a lot, showing that electricity production parameters are highly significant for the environmental impacts. The sensitivity analysis shows that the type of truck engine and the share of water reduced from the lacquer to a high degree affect the total emission load caused by transportation. Through a Swedwood perspective it is of great importance to focus on the transport distances in combination with the reduction of water from the lacquer; the greater the part of a distance you can transport the lacquer reduced from water, the higher the environmental impact improvements you achieve. To build one or a few central mixing sites might be a good idea in the cases where transport distances are long, but then, following facts are of great importance to remember: today the lacquer producers vouch for the required quality, and to achieve the desired optimisations both knowledge, experience and funding would be needed.