Life Cycle Assessment for furniture production

Sustainability is becoming more and more a primary goal for every human activity and the development world-wide of furniture has long been measured on this issue, in all its implications. There is no doubt that the different relationship between economic activity and the environment is a priority on which governments and consumers give increasing importance, causing a need of knowledge and fundamentals that has led Catas, an Italian company which specialises in tests and analysis for the wood-furnishing sector to equip itself to support companies in the processes of “green” analysis and design.

Very often one declares an ‘ecological passion’ without going into detail, without knowing how much a product "costs" for the environment not only for the production process impact, but for its entire life, including disposal. Yet the tools to give objectivity to all this are there: for years we have been talking about “LCALife Cycle Assessment”, a method that evaluates the impact that a car, a building but also a chair or a kitchen will have on the planet.

Italian analysis company Catas has the tools to measure environmental impact from manufacture to disposal.

The first point is to understand how a product will be used and for how long it will perform its function, calculating not only the resources necessary for its realization, but how its use will affect the environment and humans in terms of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, ozone depletion, human toxicity, land use, ecotoxicity … for the entire duration of its life!

This requires strict, precise assessment and measurement tools to be able to generate an "environmental declaration” that can be verified by a third party and made public so that the “ecological characteristics” of a good can be known by all and therefore become a “plus” in the reasons for purchase.

From September 2020 a task force has been allocated to this topic, a team of Catas technicians are taking part in a high-level training project in order to support companies in this process. By June 2021, Catas will have all the necessary tools – skills, models, procedures – to offer technical assistance to the companies of the wood and furniture sector for the Life Cycle Assessment of their products.

The service that Catas will offer will be based on a technical method already adopted in many other sectors at an international level, with all the required ingredients of precision and objectivity of measurement defined by the UNI 11698: 2017 standard “Estimate, declaration and use of uncertainty of the results of a Life Cycle Assessment - Requirements and guidelines”.

For more go to www.catas.com