A Study of Ecological Products by Life Cycle Assessment in Thai Furniture Industry

Laemlaksakul, Vanchai; Sangsai, Naratip

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.431.344

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Material reduction: When designing furniture, it is critical to identify the components with the greatest environmental impact, such as the seatback of a chair, and to aim for dimension reduction [51], for example, by decreasing thickness through Finite Element Analysis [52]. Implementing advanced technology in production processes can enhance ecoefficiency by reducing the use of raw materials [34].…”

Section: Furniture's Environmental Impact and Innovation Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Environmentally Sustainable Furniture Products: Furniture-Specific Life Cycle Design Guidelines and a Toolkit to Promote Environmental Performance

Yang,

Vezzoli

2024

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As awareness of the serious environmental impact of the furniture sector increases, design is increasingly recognized as a crucial lever for innovating towards sustainable furniture products. This acknowledgment was emphasized by the European Union in the Circular Economy Action Plan in 2020 and is further emphasized in the forthcoming Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation in 2024. To address the environmental issues stemming from the life cycle of furniture products, which constitute the fundamental part of the furniture system, specific design knowledge and know-how are developed within this study. Although Life Cycle Design (LCD) is a systematic approach to reducing environmental impacts, its application within the furniture system remains limited. This paper adopts a design-based research approach with three research stages and employs various methods including a literature review, case study, workshops, interviews, questionnaires, and a focus group to develop furniture-specific LCD guidelines and a toolkit. As a result, this paper presents furniture-specific LCD guidelines (comprising 7 strategies, 21 sub-strategies, and 154 guidelines), 41 environmentally sustainable furniture case cards, and a toolkit (comprising 4 tools). These guidelines provide comprehensive principles for designers to address environmental impact throughout the furniture’s life cycle. The toolkit guides sustainable furniture LCD, promoting low environmental impact and high design efficiency. These outcomes address the existing gaps in knowledge and tools in this field.

show abstract

Section: Furniture's Environmental Impact and Innovation Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Environmentally Sustainable Furniture Products: Furniture-Specific Life Cycle Design Guidelines and a Toolkit to Promote Environmental Performance

Yang,

Vezzoli

2024

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Reduction of materials consumption for furniture is one design strategy. When designing furniture, it is essential to define the most impacting components, like seatback for chair, and reduce the dimension (Laemlaksakul and Sangsai, 2013), e.g. reducing the thickness by conducting Finite Element Analysis (Wang, Su and Zhu, 2016).…”

Section: Life Cycle Design (Lcd) Level Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The application of Life Cycle Assessment in sustainable furniture system design

Yang¹

2022

Ergonomics in Design

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a quantitative methodology to assess the environmental impacts of products, services, and systems. Considering the sustainable furniture production and consumption system is one of the challenges that should be addressed and improved for a better quality of life for residents and lower pollution levels for the environment. The International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook by the European Commission has defined 23 LCA applications within which developing design strategies is one. Considering 80% of environmental impacts are decided in the design stage, the research explores LCA's application in sustainable furniture system design by reviewing former articles. The study aims to define furniture design strategies based on LCA analysis. Methods: This research presents a systematic review of 165 articles and books (2000 - 2021) of Life cycle assessment research on furniture. These articles are chosen from Scopus and Google scholar, based on the relation to furniture LCA and impact factor, to make the literature review reliable. It analyses papers in the following three aspects—first, the assessed object(s) and the LCA objectives; second, LCA methods used in articles; and third, the recommended design strategies. The main findings: Reviewed articles generally belong to two categories, case study research and literature review. The exploration provides an overview of LCA supporting sustainable furniture design in 4 different levels: material level, product life cycle level, product service system level and company level. As a result, the research proposes a framework and maps the reviewed furniture design strategies onto this framework. The proposed framework shows design strategies in these four levels: material design, furniture life cycle design, product service system design, and value chain management. The framework also shows how various design strategies contribute to sustainable furniture design and visualizes linkages, overlaps and complementarities between these strategies based on quantitative LCA results.Discussion: Even though these articles proposed many strategies, we are unsure whether some strategies are missing. What is more, if we want to use these design strategies to support practical design activities, an important step is to define the priorities of different strategies in these four levels. This framework needs further assessment and confrontation among experts to make the framework comprehensive and meaningful in real work.

show abstract

“…In addition, all the wood fuel and part of the waste HWP can be burned into energy, thus reducing the consumption of fossil fuels, so it is also considered to have a positive impact on reducing carbon emissions. Laemlaksakul and Sangsai (2013) conducted a study on ecological products of Thai furniture industry based on life cycle assessment. They found that the production of input materials such as wood materials and metals, energy demand, and providing input to factories can be regarded as the most important environmental issues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review on carbon reduction analysis during the design and manufacture of solid wood furniture

Zhu

Wang

2021

BioRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reducing carbon emissions is the direction various industries will head in the future. Solid wood furniture products that occupy important market shares have high carbon reduction potential. This article briefly describes the carbon footprint of the solid wood furniture production process. In addition, it analyzes the feasible carbon reduction technologies applicable during the design and manufacturing process through the potential emission reduction-oriented approach, ranging from the upstream raw materials to overall power consumption. The primary carbon reduction potential points entail the high efficiency and reuse of primary materials, the reduction of auxiliary materials, and the optimization of solid wood processing based on spraying and dust removal. In this study, the carbon reduction design of solid wood furniture primarily covers the design methods, material selection, structural design, and packaging design. The carbon reduction manufacturing technology was analyzed from a process, equipment, and management aspect. It is hoped that this study can provide a reference for the future strategic design of solid wood furniture companies, which will promote low-carbon development in the wood furniture industry.

show abstract

A Study of Ecological Products by Life Cycle Assessment in Thai Furniture Industry

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

Designing Environmentally Sustainable Furniture Products: Furniture-Specific Life Cycle Design Guidelines and a Toolkit to Promote Environmental Performance

Designing Environmentally Sustainable Furniture Products: Furniture-Specific Life Cycle Design Guidelines and a Toolkit to Promote Environmental Performance

The application of Life Cycle Assessment in sustainable furniture system design

A review on carbon reduction analysis during the design and manufacture of solid wood furniture

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About