Life Cycle Analysis & Recycling Practice Questions

Give the two missing stages, Stage 2 and Stage 3.

Transport and distribution are included at each stage of the LCA.

Suggest one environmental impact of transporting the benches from the factory to the shops.

Describe how the damaged glass bottles can be recycled to make different glass products.

Suggest one reason why reusing a glass bottle has a smaller environmental impact than recycling it.

Give the two pieces of information in the table that can be given a numerical value fairly easily.

Explain why an LCA is not a purely objective process.

Suggest two pieces of information the company would need to produce a complete LCA of the toothbrush.

Explain why the claim in the advertisement may not be justified.

Calculate the energy needed to make each bag per use.

Use the table.

Energy per use for the paper bag = .................... kJ

Energy per use for the plastic bag = .................... kJ

Give one reason why the plastic bags need less energy to transport to the supermarket than the paper bags.

Give one advantage of the paper bag at the disposal stage of the life cycle assessment.

The table does not contain enough information for a complete life cycle assessment.

Suggest two other pieces of information that should be included.

Describe how scrap aluminium drinks cans are recycled to make new aluminium cooking foil.

Explain how adding scrap steel to the iron from a blast furnace helps to conserve limited resources.

Scrap steel to be used for making high quality tools must be sorted more carefully than scrap steel used for making reinforcing bars for concrete.

Suggest why.

Evaluate the use of disposable nappies compared with the use of reusable cotton nappies.

You should use features of life cycle assessments (LCAs) in your answer.

Use the table.