PARTNERSHIP with a glass wool producer for accurate LCA

This presentation aims to illustrate how a partnership with the private sector can progressively become a win-win collaboration. Taking into account the environmental aspects in the building sector has become unavoidable. Knauf Insulation, a glass wool producer, has started to evaluate the environmental impacts of it manufacturing processes for drafting Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). This first objective was mainly intended to respond to a market demand for EPDs of their products. Our first contact with Knauf Insulation was for drawing up EPDs of 10 of their products. This first work has shown the need for a more flexible tool to allow rapid life cycle analyze of a product and publication of an EPD, and thus respond quickly to market demands. The need of a better understanding of the environmental impact of the process is also underline to allow to follow the evolution of the impact and to reduce it. All the glass wool products are manufactured in a similar way, only a few parameters, such as density or thickness, are modified in the process to produce a given product. We have therefore chosen to develop a generic model that can be used for all glass wool products produced by Knauf Insulation, in any of their plants. The LCA model was developed in GaBi, and thanks to a positive collaboration with Thinkstep, the software editor, and Knauf Insulation, the model is finetuned for the production plants. Knauf Insulation can use this model for EPDs as well as for Ecoconception. The model is built to be user-friendly: the user sets the product characteristics and dimensions, and in which plant (or combination of plants) it is produced. The data collection is performed by Knauf Insulation with our support. When new data are available, the model is easily updated. Therefore the model is easy to use, easy to update and accurate. Thanks to this positive experience the collaboration is ongoing. The same modelling aspects have been adapted to another insulation product from Knauf Insulation, stone wool. Furthermore, Knauf Insulation has developed a new binder for its products called ECOSE and produced from renewable materials (biomass), and is formaldehyde-free. The previous LCA underline the need of a better characterization of ECOSE in a LCA perspective. Therefore, a PhD is underway to evaluate the impacts of this binder and its applications (glass wool products) as well as its future applications. This story underlines how the partnership between the university and private sector is a win-win situation, staring from EPD and leading to much needed fundamental research, more accurate EPDs and better awareness of the environmental impacts in general, when the private sector is convinced with the interest of the demarche