🚚Manufacturing & Transportation

Manufacturing

The impacts of producing the product (raw materials, forming, and transport) depend on the region of production. The region of use determines the average rates of recovery, recycled content inclusion, and disposal mixes.

By default, the region of production is set to be the same as the region of use. But the users can specify the region of production for a product, distinct from the region of use.

Transportation

Various transport processes throughout a product life cycle contribute to environmental impacts. Some transport stages are embedded within predefined activities and cannot be modified by the users (see default values for transport stages), while others may be customized:

Infographic showing which transport stages in the whole life cycle of a product are customizable in the UP Scorecard.

For the customizable transportation legs, the users can choose between different transportation modes, and specify the transportation distances. It is also possible to add transportation stages.

Finally, the user can adjust the Mass load factor (default is 85%).

Mass Load Factor: This factor depends on the packing efficiency of products during shipping. If a trailer is filled to capacity but is under its rated payload weight, the mass load factor will be less than 100%.

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Example

The transportation parameter strongly influences the climate metric. The graph below shows how the g CO2-eq. changes based on transportation modes for different materials. The following graph shows the life cycle global warming impact of various single-use items, with different supplier-to-user transportation scenarios (values in g CO2 eq).

Graph showing g CO2-eq. for different single-use drinking containers based on the mode of transportation used. The transportation refers to transport from supplier to user.