Carbon Emissions of China’s Cement Packaging: Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

China is the largest producer of cement in the world. With this tremendous production of cement, the extensively used cement packaging embodies significant carbon dioxide emissions. However, this has scarcely been investigated. This paper presents the first investigation into three types of cement packaging in China using the life cycle assessment methodology. The carbon dioxide emissions in each production phase of cement packaging were calculated and compared to the emissions in the western, middle, and eastern regions in China. The results show that in the production phase, the consumption of electricity accounted for the highest proportion of total carbon dioxide emissions (23.39–35.14%), followed by the consumption of polypropylene-based material (23.39%). From a packaging perspective, laminated plastic woven bags emitted the most carbon dioxide (0.637 kg/bag), followed by paper–plastic composite bags (0.536 kg/bag) and paper bags (0.022 kg/bag). In regional terms, the western region emitted the most carbon dioxide (3.06 million tons) compared with the eastern (2.01 million tons) and middle (1.81 million tons) regions due to the low bulk rate. Our findings indicate that using paper–plastic composite bags instead of laminated plastic woven bags and using recycled materials instead of new materials in certain production phases can considerably reduce the environmental impacts of cement packaging. The government should encourage the use of non-coal energy power generation for the production phase. Further improvements could focus on the use of bulk cement instead of packaged cement.

Research Themes, Evolution Trends, and Future Challenges in China’s Carbon Emission Studies

“…Notably, scholars such as Xu [5], Shao [6], Han [7], Wang [8], Fan [9], and others have individually computed carbon emissions for entities like China, Beijing, industrial sectors, agriculture, and the transportation industry. Research indicates that Chinese scholars employ various methods for calculating carbon emissions, including the energy consumption method [10], life cycle assessments (LCAs) [11], and the input-output method [12]. A comparative evaluation of the results obtained from these methods is presented in Table 1.…”

“…Life cycle assessment [11] The life cycle method allows for a detailed analysis of each stage in the production process when calculating carbon emissions, avoiding omissions. It is an objective and quantifiable metric that mitigates subjective biases.…”

Energy Consumption and Environment Performance Analysis of Induction-Healed Asphalt Pavement by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

“…In addition to the raw materials of the traditional asphalt mixture, the key to the self-repairing asphalt pavement in this paper is the addition of steel fiber [ 16 , 23 , 24 ]. In the material manufacturing stage of raw materials, the production energy consumption and related emissions data of various materials are based on the existing database and relevant industrial environment and energy reports, while the transportation distance between the material manufacturer and the mixing station is recorded and converted to the calculated value according to the actual data of the project test section cases [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. The upper layer production mix ratio of the test section is shown in Table 2 , the production energy consumption and related emission data of various materials can be seen in Table 3 , and the transportation distance is shown in Table 4 .…”

A Survey and Analysis on Electricity Consumption of Raw Material Mill System in China Cement Industry between 2014 and 2019

“…China is the largest producer of cement in the world [1]. The cement production process consists of three mills and one kiln, in which the total electricity consumption of the three-stage mill of raw material, coal powder, and cement products accounts for about 70% of the total electricity consumption per ton of cement.…”