Background, Aim and Scope:
The paper is based on the results of the project that was sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and was carried out by the Wood Technology Institute in Poznan, Poland. The main purpose of the project was to assess the environmental impacts generated during the entire life cycles of the chosen wooden products.
Materials and Methods:
Most of data came from the polish wood industry, but some of them was taken from the ecoinvent database, particularly in relation to the forest processes. The data was not used as presented in database, but an appropriate adaptation was performed. The aim of the paper is to show the ways how the ecoinvent’s initial assumptions have been changed and the data has been adapted. The influence of the adaptation on the characterisation results is presented as well.
Results:
The study shows that the differences between ecoinvent and Polish data for the wood production exist. Some of differences are important and they have strong impact on the final results. The data differ in relation to many issues, for example: the trees species, a yield of forest, a time from planting trees to final harvesting, length and width of the forest roads or a total area and land use. The differences in the initial assumptions and later in the allocation factors, result in change of the inventory points and the characterization results. The relevant differences for round hardwood and residual hardwood are not observed. It is not however a case of the industrial hardwood where the visible difference exist. The results for all sorts of softwood are completely different and any similarities can not be observed.
Discussion:
At present, the total area of forest land in Poland is 9.0 million hectares. This is equivalent to 28.8% of the country’s area. It means that the forest processes are important for the country. The study could be a part of the more general discussion about a suitability of data recognizedzed by database’s generators as representative for larger areas (Europe, Asia, world).
Conclusions:
The following conclusions could be formulated based on the results of the project: the differences between countries always exist and they can be a source of uncertainty, particularly if unspecific data is used. On the other hand, it is impossible to collect specific data for all inventory points included in the product system that is why LCA databases are needed.
Recommendations and
Perspectives:
The following questions arise: how important the discrepancy is? What its influence on the final results is? Could it be acceptable? There are some activities like, for example, an electricity production where the differences between countries can be crucial for the final LCA results.
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