Environmental analysis of a bio-based coating material for automobile interiors

The evolution towards an increasingly more sustainable development and a more circular economy requires the development of materials based on renewable feedstocks, to replace the still dominant non-renewable resources. Several imitation leather materials produced from renewable feedstocks have recently emerged to replace animal or synthetic leathers used in car interiors, with good performance results. However, few Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies are available for evaluating the potential environmental impacts of these new materials. Thus, the present study contributes to fill this gap, carrying out an anticipatory LCA (a-LCA) of a new bio-based material, a vegetable leather, intended for coatings in car interiors, produced from olive pomace, an abundant by-product of olive oil production in Portugal. For the life cycle inventory analysis, information from the literature and industrial practice was used, such as information from similar production processes, correlations, or simplistic approximations, in order to obtain an estimate of energy and materials consumption for the new vegetable leather production. Four environmental impact categories were evaluated: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Photochemical Oxidation Potential (POP). Six scenarios were compared, defined considering the incorporation of different percentages of alkyd resin and polyurethane into the vegetable leather. The calculations were carried out using the openLCA software and considering a “cradle-to-gate” approach. The results show that the new vegetable leather presents significant environmental impacts, being the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) mesh fabric the greatest contributor, followed by energy consumption. A recycled PET mesh fabric was also analyzed. It is concluded that despite the bio-based components used, a high percentage of synthetic materials is still required, which leads to higher environmental impacts of the whole material.