Step-by-step guide: Creating an LCA for a glass bottle

This guide covers the main steps required to perform an LCA of a 33 cl glass bottle.

Connect to Pilario

To create an LCA for packaging, we need to connect to Pilario where we will provide our username and password.

Creating a new bottle

Once we have connected to Pilario we will be brought to the main page which, by default, lists the products we have defined in our system. You can navigate to other assets via the left bar menu. 

If this is your first time using the system, the list might be empty. Don't worry, we are about to create our first product. Follow these steps:

1. Click in the upper right corner button, Add a product.
2. Define the basic product attributes like name, external id, model and labels.
   1. Name is mandatory, in this case we will use Tea Bottle 33 cl. but you can give the name you want
   2. External id can be left empty, it will usually be an internal reference used in your company and/or other systems.
   3. In this guide we are using the model Packaging Glass, you can read more about it in our knowledge base.
      Note that depending on your licence and/or user permissions you might see less models available in the list.
   4. Labels can be used to categorise products or help searching for them in the future. You can add as many as you want, but can also be left empty.
3. Click on Add product

On the left side you will see all the life stages of the product i.e Composition, Glass production, Supply transport, Manufacturing, etc. We will be navigating them in order to provide the information required to perform the LCA.

Defining other product attributes

In the product description section, there are other important attributes that will impact the calculations.  They can be found in the Description section, after the General attributes under the Functional Unit and Reference product section. To see them, you can scroll down or collapse the General section.

There you can define the Primary packaging volume and its content weight, in addition to the Functional unit of choice. When selecting a Custom functional unit, you can additionally define the Reference flow and any custom name. 

In this example, we are considering a functional unit as per litre, and so, our Reference flow will be automatically calculated to 3.03 primary packaging unit / FU.

Defining the bottle components

We will navigate to the Composition section on the left, this is where we define the different raw materials of the components of our glass bottle. In a real case, we will add all the components used to produce the bottle including the label, sleeves, plastic joints, etc but for the sake of simplicity, we will create a very simple product composed of a glass body (256 g.) and a steel cap  (2.7 g. out of which 32% is recycled).

To define the components, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Composition section, and click on the ➕ button, once per component.
2. If desired, change the name of the component by selecting it from the menu, and clicking on the title where it says Component 1 and give the name you want
3. For each component, define its raw materials. In our example, we are just defining them as:
   1. Bottle:
      1. In the section Component description - Number of uses: 30
      2. In the section Glass - Glass weight 256
         Note that the recycled content for the glass is disabled here as in the specific Packaging Glass model, you can define this (an other related parameters) in the specific section Glass production. 
   2. Cap: Steel weight 2.7, Steel recycled content 32%
4. If we go back to the Composition section, we will see that the total weight of the product is the addition of both materials.

Defining the allocation rules for recycling benefits

The packaging LCA model allows the user to choose the allocation to be applied for the main recyclable materials. The allocation must be defined based on the target of your calculation and if you are not sure about what allocation should be chosen, use a predefined Methodological standard for allocation.

These parameteres can be defined by following these steps:

1. Navigate to the Composition section
2. Scroll down to the Expert parameters - Recycling benefits allocation section
3. Choose a Methodological standards for allocation

... or define the A factor and Qs/Qp in and out for your materials

The predefined methodological standards for allocation are covered in the article Available methodological standards for recyclable benefits allocation.

Completing the glass production (furnace) information

The Packaging Glass LCA model allows the user to fill  specific information about the glass production, thus, a specific section Glass production is displayed on the left menu. There, you can enter in detail information related to your glass production

In this example we will assume that all the glass used for the bottle is coming from the same source and following the same specific production, for which we will accept the default values.

To enter that information we will follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Glass production section, and click on the ➕ 
2. Change the default name of Furnace 1 to Bottle production by clicking on the heading
3. Enter the following values (you can adapt to your needs) in the Glass description section:
   1. Glass share: 100%
   2. Internal cullet: 10%
   3. External cullet: 40%
      See note below about the cullet to understand this parameters.

1. Enter the following example values in the Raw materials section:
   1. Natural soda: 210 kg / ton
   2. Silica sand: 710 kg / ton
   3. Feldspar: 70 kg / ton
   4. Limestone: 185 kg / ton
2. Enter the following values in the Energy consumption section (we will assume here that our furnace uses only natural gas):
   1. Metling - Natural gas: 4.3 GJ / ton
   2. Non-melting - Natural gas: 1.2 GJ / ton
   3. Recovered energy: 0.8 GJ / ton

Completing the bottle manufacturing information

In case the manufacturing of your bottle would include other processes like decoration, labelling etc, we could include them in the Manufacturing section on the left. For the sake of simplicity in this example we are only adding the steel closure process, which should be added to the Cap component.

Proceed as follows:

1. Navigate to the Manufacturing section, and select the Cap, and click on the ➕ to add a manufacturing process.
2. Rename the step from Step 1 to Steel closure
3. Select Steel closure from the available manufacturing processes list
4. Verify that the default values populated for several fields like the Manufacturing loss  and the energy consumptions are matching your sources.

Adding end-of-life information

The last stage in the life of a product is the end-of-life where we should specify what will happen to it (or its components). Pilario contains an extended list of default values for most of the countries in terms of recycling and incineration rate, but as a user you can always change them to match your sources.

As explained before, we can see that for each component a new subsection has been created under the End-of-life section, we will verify that the default values are adequate so we will folllow these steps:

1. Navigate to the End-of-life section, and select the Bottle
   1. Notice how Glass has been selected automatically the Identified main recyclable material This happens whenever more than 90% of the material is identified as a recycable material (aluminium, steel, PET, PP, HDPE, LDPE, PS, glass, cardboard, paper or wood).
2. Select the country, in this case we will use Belgium
3. Verify that the Recycling rate and Incineration rate match your sources
4. Repeat the steps for the Cap

Filling other information

For simplicity and to keep this guide short, we haven't filled the information in other stages like Supply transport, Filling, Distribution and Collection but in order to perform a full LCA you should complete the information in those sections:

• In the Supply transport you should fill the information regarding the transportation of the materials (components) to your factories. This will require to enter information like the distances travelled and the return rates among other things. In any case, some default values are presented and so, results will be displayed in this stage.
• In the Filling you should include the information regarding the filling of the can (using at the beverage factory), the sealing, etc
• In the Distribution you should fill the information regarding the distribution of the manufactured cans. This could involve distribution to retailers or filling factories.
• In the Collection you should include the information related to the collection for refilling, recycling, reuse (i.e pallets) or disposal.

Displaying the results

At any time in the process we can see the results of our LCA in the results tab. To open the results you can click on the arrow in the upper right corner which will expand the results column.

The results column contains three tabs which allow us to display the results in different ways: a grid, a graph and stacked graph. By default the results will display the Climate change indicator of our LCA but we can select which ever we want. For the grid, we can disaggregate per component by expending each stage.

In this example we will see that our  Filling, Distribution and Collection are empty because we did not fill that information and so, we can consider our results incomplete, when performing an LCA you should ensure that those stages include the appropriate information.

That's it, you have managed to create a glass bottle can and get the LCIA...  Congratulations on making it until here!

Do you want to explore further what you could do from here?

• You could generate a written report to analyse offline or share with third partes. This is covered in the article How to generate a written report for your product?
• You could export your results into a spreadsheet. This is covered in the article How to export the impacts of your product into a spreadsheet?
• You could play with the parameters of your product to see how those will affect the impact of your product. This is covered in the specific guide Step-by-step guide: creating a scenario for a glass bottle See you there!