LCA Of a cleaning device of coffee caps

Life cycle assessment

        On this section we will go through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of our device and all the modifications that our device will bring to the recycling chain of Nespresso. Considering that most of the data are almost impossible to get, this LCA will as a majority be based on assumptions. Data like energy consumption of the different machines used in the recycling facility of Remondis as well as data about the routes and the quantities of trucks that are transporting the waste from the shops to the recycling center are also missing.

We will do an Eco-Audit (EA) of our solution, made on the software CES Educpack, to see how much it will cost in terms of pollution to build our device. This EA is also based on assumption but unlike the previous made on the machines’ energy consumption, those are easier to guess and would be more realistic.

Eco-Audit of our device

As a quick remember, the next illustration is a sketch of our device. The blue part of the device will be made of aluminum, or an aluminum alloy. Except the cutting tool that will be made of stainless steel, the other tools will also be made of aluminum alloy. We choose stainless steel for the cutting tool, because the stiffness of this material allows the tool to last longer and stays sharp for the entire life of the coffee machine. Moreover, stainless steel, by definition, doesn’t rust, and it’s very important because the device will be used in a wet environment. Finally, because the capsules are made of aluminum, the tool need to be harder than the material being cut, otherwise the system will require more strength. The risk to break the machine therefore increase if the customer needs to push harder on the handle. To keep the customer experience to a high level, the overall working of the machine needs to be as smooth as possible, to keep this premium image of Nespresso.[pic 1]

The choice of aluminum of the shape of the system is also quite logical. First, it’s a material that you can recycle for ever and ever, this make this material very sustainable. Then the aluminum doesn’t rust either, and this feature is necessary in our system. Finally, it’s stronger than the plastics in general which is quite important is a system actioned by mechanical force, and lighter than stainless steel which is also better for reducing the overall weight of the product and then pollute less during transportations.

The values in this table are from the software CES Edupack and are average values.

We can see on the table above that the aluminum is the best choice regarding the major functions that our device need to achieve. Indeed, aluminum is almost 2 times lighter than stainless steel which is great for the weight saving for the machine. In the same time aluminum is also more than 10 time stronger than plastics with a reasonable toughness of 74 GPA. For the cutting tool, we can see that stainless steel is very much harder than aluminum, so it will cut the capsules easily. For the price, aluminum is slightly more expansive than the plastics but with much better characteristics regarding the to the use of the device. Therefore, we choose aluminum as a main material.

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