Project 4.1, Life cycle analysis basics

In the realm of environmentalism, it is important to perform analysis of the actions you are taking. One of these tools is called a life cycle analysis- or “the method of quantifying the environmental impacts associated with a given product.” According to the ScienceDirect article, a team usually monitors the resources used and pollutants generated in a product production and use. I think that it is interesting that we make these sorts of connections to the impact we have on the planet because most of the time, products are only monitored for their intended purpose. The Life cycle analysis therefore generates more talk about the beginning, partnerships and ending of a product. The beauty of LCA’s is that they don’t have to stop. I like to conceptualize it as a giant web of interactions that one product faces.

-Working at a grocery store this past year has brought me more questions that I ever thought I could ask about a grocery store. When you visit the store, you’d expect that everything works out as they propose it to work out, but this is not the case. For example, at Wegmans, they have signs all over the bathroom advertising for their hand-blowers and how they have saved millions of pounds of paper waste just at that location alone. Sure, that may be a true estimate, but the store also is neglecting the amount of waste they produce in other areas of the store. At the front end, customers are constantly forgetting their reusable bags causing the cashiers to use brown paper bags. While this is a better alternative for the former plastic bags, I just wonder how much better it really is if I go through a few hundred paper bags per shift, not including the ones they discard due to manufacturing errors. Is it worth cutting down all of the trees for convenience? I want to emphasize that these paper bags are being used as single use, according to the polls I take while I am working.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/life-cycle-analysis