Step-by-step guide: Creating an LCA for an aluminium can

This guide covers the main steps required to perform an LCA of an aluminium container, we use a 330 cl. can to illustrate the example.

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 packaging

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 Aluminium can 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, you can read more about it in our knowledge base
   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 Save

The product will be created, and we will be automatically taken to its page. There we can define other attributes like a description and pictures.

On the left side you will see all the life stages of the product i.e Composition, 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 Product volume and the Functional unit of choice. When selecting a Custom functional unit, you can additionally define the functional unit per packaging and the custom name. 

As an example you could express your results per serving size by choosing "Custom functional unit", name your Functional Unit "A serving size" and input the correct amount of serving sizes per packaging.

Defining the packaging 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 aluminium can. In a real case, we will add all the components used to produce the can including the internal and external coating, the ink for the printing, etc but for the sake of simplicity, we will create a very simple product composed of an aluminium body (8.9 g. out of which 50% is recycled) and a lid (2.3 g. out of which 50% 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
3. For each component, define its raw materials. In our example, we are just defining them as:
   1. Main body: Aluminium weight 8.9, Aluminium recycled content 50%
   2. End (lid): Aluminium weight 2.3, Aluminium recycled content 50%

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 standards 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
4. ... 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 can manufacturing information

Now we will focus on defining the manufacturing process(es) for our can. This is done in the Manufacturing section on the left. If we go to that section we can see some information that is already being summarised and can help us perform a good LCA. For example, notice how the Total packaging weight per product is calculating the addition of all the components our aluminum can 11.2 g.

We can also notice that Pilario has created automatically one subsection per each of our components there and for each of them we can define different manufacturing steps. Again, for the sake of simplicity we will assume that the production of our can involves a single step per each component.

Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Manufacturing section, Main body subsection and click on the ➕ 
2. Rename the step from Step 1 to Aluminium body by clicking on the heading
3. Select Aluminium 2 parts cylindracal body part under the Manufacturing process
4. Review the default values proposed in the model for this manufacturing process:
   1. Notice how the weight in becomes 11.36 g. due to a 13% manufacturing loss.
   2. Notice how this process involves natural gas and electricity consumption under the energy consumption
   3. Notice how this process consumes some watter under the material consumption
5. Repeat these steps for the End (lid) but instead of Aluminium 2 parts cylindracal body part select Aluminium 2 parts cylindracal end part
   1. Notice changes in the energy consumed.

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 Main body
   1. Notice how Aluminium has been selected automatically the Identified main recyclable material
2. Select the country, in this case we will use Belgium
3. Verify that the Recycling rate and Incineration rate match your sources

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 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 recycling or disposal.

Viewing 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 Supply transport , Filling, Distribution and Collection are empty because we did not fill that information and so, we can consider our results incomplete.

Making a test scenario

One of the most powerful features of Pilario is the ability to create scenarios, that is, perform  ecodesign improvements to see the impact of those changes against the original product.

Let's continue with our aluminium can example. In this scenario, we would want to evaluate what would be the impact of replacing the machinery used to manufacture the almunium body with a more efficient one which uses less electricity (the ficticious machine is called AluShaper 3000 which we will use in the name of our scenario)

Let's see the steps needed to create a scenario and see the results:

1. In the upper right corner, go to the Actions button and select Create scenario
   1. Notice how we have changed from the Product page to the Scenarios in the left menu
      
2. This will duplicate our product and will bring us to its page, we can change the name an description to identify our scenario later
   1. In the name append AluShaper 3000
   2. In the description you could include something that could help you understand better this scenario, in this case, we don't add anything as the name is descriptive enough
3. Perform now the changes of this new process, in a real life scenario this might involve many changes, but in this case, we will just reduce the electricity used to produce the body of the can
   1. On the left menu, go to the Manufacturing > Main body > Almunium body. Remember that this is the single manufacturing step, but in a real life scenario you might have several steps.
   2. Change the Electricity consumption, from 1.42 to 1.38 kWh/kg in
4. Expand the results tab (via the arrow on the upper right corner)
5. Navigate through the results and compare the fictional product and the real one in any of the tabs.