Ice cream maker DFE
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This page examines the impact on the environment that the ice cream maker produt has both during it's manufacturing and throughout it's life.
Contents |
Life Cycle Assessment
A Life cycle assessment (LCA) accounts for the impacts that the Ice cream maker has on the environment throughout it life. The manufactoring and use of the product are a system that has inputs from different economic sectors. An Economic Input-Output LCA (EIO-LCA) analyizes these inputs to the system. All data from this EIO-LCA is from 1997 and avialble from the LAC software at http://www.eiolca.net and the Bureau of Economic Analysis at http://bea.gov.
The Ice cream maker fits best into the "Electric housewares and household fan manufacturing" sector. As a small home appliance without a large refrigerator component it is closer in assembly to a food processor or a blender then a commericial ice cream maker. Household electric fans and different types of small cooking appliances are largely representative of this sector, and are assembled very similarly to the ice cream maker (just geared differently) this isn't a terrible approximation.
Production
The top greenhouse gas producing sectors related to ice cream maker production are:
Electric housewares and household fan manufactoring,
Wholesale trade
Management of companies and enterprises
Plastics plumbing fixtures and all other plastics products
All other forging and stamping
Iron and steel mills
Plastics material and resin manufacturing
Truck trasnportation
Paper and paperboard mills
Motor and generator manufacturing
| Emissions | GWP MTCO2E | CO2 MTCO2E | CH4 MTCO2E | N2O MTCO2E | CFCs MTCO2E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total for all Sectors | 693. | 598. | 54.1 | 10.7 | 30.5 |
Trasportation
This type of product is loargely shipped using truck transporation which is a huge contributor to the Greenhouse Gas emissions. Switching over to a purchessor price model of the production system causes a 45.9% increase in the amount of economic activity in the truck transportation sector. This increase it due to the after production shipping, the transportation of the product to the retail location. The GWP emissions only move by about 30 points when the shipping to retail is considtered. This amount is less significant when compared to the total GWP emissions for production which is around 600 points.
Use
The power output of the ice cream maker motor is 50 watts and is expected to run for about 20 mins per use time. The number of lifetime uses probably varries widely with the customer. The product is covered by a three year limited warrenty so an estiment of product life might be three or four times that length. If a user makes ice cream twice a month for 9 to 12 years that means running the machine for 8 hours a year and 72 to 96 hours over it's lifetime. That means the ice cream maker costs about 3.6 to 4.8 kilowatt hours for an avreage user over itslifetime.
According to the Energy Information Administrations (http://eia.doe.gov) in 1997 the average price of 1 Residential KwH in PA was 10.07 cents. The average consumer when then have to pay around $0.42 to run the ice cream maker over it's estimated lifetime. Between now and 1997 there's been 27.23% inflation according to http://inflationdata.com. This indications that a $50 ice cream maker in 2007 is equivelent to about $40 ice cream maker of 1997. $1 million dollars worth of ice cream makers operating in 1997 would cost about $10,500 in use over their lifetime, in 1997 money. This cost from usage indicated a less significant impact on the environment during use then during initial production.
