Environmental Assessment of Bamboo-Based Multi-Layer Composites: A Life Cycle Analysis Perspective

Bamboo-based multilayer composite materials are a new type of bio-composite material with high strength, wide applicability, and low cost. Based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, this paper analyzes the energy consumption and harmful substance emissions of producing 1m³ of this product using the basic data inventory provided by the material processing enterprises, GaBi 6.0 software, and the CML2016 method. Results show that in the production and manufacturing process of bamboo-based multilayer composite materials, the environmental impact category with the most significant influence is acidification (AP), accounting for 53.27%, followed by marine aquatic ecotoxicity (MAETP) and eutrophication (EP). In its production, the environmental load mainly comes from bamboo combustion (for energy) and rough planing (to remove bamboo green and bamboo yellow), which account for 74.59% and 6.93% of the total environmental load, respectively. The study also found that burning waste bamboo can meet the factory's energy self-sufficiency, and except for eutrophication (EP) and acidification (AP), all other environmental loads are less than that of coal and natural gas combustion. Based on the above analysis, bamboo-based multilayer composite materials possess low-carbon, energy-saving, and environmentally-friendly characteristics.