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General comment Both primary and secondary data are used. The main sources for primary data are the bill
of materials and technical drawings, while site specific foreground data are provided by
ABB. Furthermore, information and data obtained from other LCA studies are also used.
For all other processes for which primary data are not available, generic data originating
from the ecoinvent v3.8 database, “allocation, cut-off by classification”, are used. The LCA
software used for the calculations is SimaPro 9.4.0.2.
The utility consumption and waste generation of ABB’s plant in the manufacturing stage
are allocated to the production of one vacuum interrupter by using allocation rules.
Because the factory produces several products (components, apparatus and
switchgears), only a part of the environmental impact has been allocated to the specific
production line. The values for the electricity, heat, pressurized air, water consumption
have been read and recorded from the counters which are distributed in the whole factory
and are connected to certain areas or even single machines or single workstations. Thus,
the total utility consumption and waste generation for 2022 is simply divided by the total
output of vacuum interrupters during the same year.
For the end-of-life allocation, the “Polluter Pays” principle is adopted according to what is
defined in the CEN/TR 16970 standard, as required by the PCR EPDItaly007. This means,
waste treatment processes are allocated to the product system that generates the waste
until the end-of-waste state is reached. The environmental burdens of recycling and
energy recovery processes are therefore allocated to the product system that generates
the waste, while the product system that uses the exported energy and recycled materials
receives it burden-free. However, the potential benefits and avoided loads from recovery
and recycling processes are not considered because it is not required by EPDItaly007.
According to PCR, the cut-off criteria can be set to a maximum of 2 % of the total weight.
For the packaging small parts such as sticking labels and grease, which are representing
a smaller fraction of the total mass, are neglected as their mass represents less than 2 %
of that of the whole component, as stated in the paragraph of cut-off criteria of EPDItaly
012: “Materials making up the switch itself whose total mass does not exceed 2 % of the
total weight of the device”. Scraps for metal working and plastic processes are included
when already defined in ecoinvent.
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