Product Function: The function of our product is to aid in the transportation of a variety of items from one location to another. The best example of this when compared to shopping bag alternatives is carrying assorted groceries.
LCA Stages: As is standard procedure, our LCA includes Goal and Scope, Life Cycle Inventory, Life Cycle Impact Assessment, and Interpretation stages.
Lifecycle Phases: The phases examined for the LCA were cotton extraction, fabric production, bag production, transportation, Use, and waste/disposal.
System Boundary: Because we were able to find data pertaining to all these phases it allowed for us to conduct a Cradle to Grave study. Because our data was sourced from locations all over the world, we can consider the entire globe as the regional limit of our data. This does however, make our study less applicable to specific locations.
Functional Unit: 1 average cotton tote bag used 50 times over a period of 1 year.
Assumptions:
20% of tote bags are recycled at the end of life (per group habits)
One tote bag will be used at a frequency of 50 times per year
The bag is washed after 10 uses, which contributes to water and energy usage during the use-phase. However, because this washing occurs alongside other clothes and materials that would have been washed anyway, this effect is considered negligible.
Consumers use and dispose of each bag in the same manner each life cycle
Incineration is used as the means of disposal for this study. (this is not always the case in practice)
Estimations to be less/greater than true impacts depending on the consumer
For comparisons, paper bags are used once before disposal.