Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool for Sustainability-Driven Product Marketing in the Thermoset Industry

Abstract

Abstract Authors: 
Desi Banatao, Global Sales Manager, Entropy Resins
Glenn House, Director of Product Safety & Regulatory Compliance, Gougeon Brothers, Inc.
Shelly Severinghaus, Senior Consultant, Long Trail Sustainability

Entropy Resins, a Gougeon Company, develops epoxy resin formulations that optimize the use of biobased, rapidly renewable raw materials without compromising performance or ease of use. Their products are used for a variety of applications including fiber reinforced composites which are increasingly used for lightweighting applications in transportation to increase fuel efficiency and range. Similarly, composites are used in many consumer facing products such as sporting goods and building materials where the environmental impact of the end product plays a major part in the consumer’s buying decision. As such being able to communicate and educate their customers about sustainability-driven product marketing ideas has become increasingly important in the composites and plastic resins industries and Entropy has turned to Life Cycle Assessment as the primary tool to quantify the environmental impacts and benefits of their products.

In partnership with Long Trail Sustainability, Entropy collected primary and secondary life cycle inventory data for its raw material stream and chemistry processes to develop an LCA model for its epoxy resin products. This model enables Entropy to outline the environmental impacts of its products through a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and also quantify the environmental benefits of their choice of biobased raw materials and green chemistry processes over the conventional raw materials and chemistry processes used by the industry today. This model can also be used by customers who perform LCA to similarly analyze the environmental impacts of their end products and the benefits of choosing materials that factor sustainability in their design.

Although more and more customers are demanding vendors to provide life cycle inventory data, the thermoset resins industry has provided little to no primary inventory data to LCA secondary datasets like Ecoinvent. As an example, currently no life cycle inventory data exists for the amines commonly used as curing agents for epoxy in Ecoinvent. As the importance of sustainable design and use of green chemistry increases, the thermoset industry must respond by providing the necessary data in order for their products to be evaluated against competitive technologies such as thermoplastics in quantitative tools such as LCA.

About Desi Banatao
Desi Banatao was a co-founder of Entropy Resins and led applications engineering for the company’s line of biobased epoxy resin formulations. Desi currently serves as the Global Sales Manager for the Entropy Resins brand as part of the Gougeon Brothers Inc’s family of epoxy brands that includes Pro-Set and West System. He holds a BS and MS in Material Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley.