A Study on Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Plasterboard Liner

This study aimed to quantitatively analyze the environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle of plasterboard liner produced in the paper industry, with a particular focus on the climate change category. The objective was to identify potential improvement measures to mitigate these impacts. To achieve this, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted using the openLCA software, analyzing the environmental burdens from Cradle-to-Gate. The climate change category accounted for 6.24E-01 kg CO2-Eq per kilogram of plasterboard liner, with electricity consumption contributing 54.28% of the total 6 major greenhouse gases emissions. Organic compound production (23.9%) and recycled corrugated cardboard (7.59%) were the next most significant contributors. Among the six greenhouse gases defined by the IPCC, CO2 accounted for the largest proportion of total emissions at 89.5%, followed by CH4 at 9.1% and N2O at 0.9%. Environmental costs were calculated as 6.01E-02 USD based on the EU ETS and 7.01E-03 USD based on the Korea ETS. Normalization results showed that the impact of toxic substances on freshwater ecosystems (Ecotoxicity: freshwater) had the highest contribution of 36.15% per kilogram of plasterboard liner produced. The stage-wise impact assessment revealed that the manufacturing stage (A3) contributed 59.97%, followed by the pre-manufacturing stage (A1-A2) at 46.06%.