Carbon fibers (CFs) are a crucial material for lightweight structures with advanced mechanical performance. However, there is still a paucity of detailed understanding regarding the environmental impacts of production. Previously, mostly singled-out scenarios for CF production have been assessed, often based on scarce transparent inventory data. To expand the current knowledge and create a robust database for future evaluation, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out. To this end, a detailed industry-approved LCI is published, which also proved plausible against the literature. Subsequently, based on a global scenario representing the market averages for precursor and CF production, the most relevant contributors to climate change (EF3.1 climate change, total) and the depletion of fossil energy carriers (EF3.1 resource use, fossil) were identified. The energy consumption in CF manufacturing was found to be responsible for 59% of the climate change and 48% of the fossil resource use. To enable a differentiated discussion of manufacturing locations and process energy consumption, 24 distinct scenarios were assessed. The findings demonstrate the significant dependence of the results on the scenarios’ boundary conditions: climate change ranges from 13.0 to 34.1 kg CO₂ eq./kg CF and resource use from 262.3 to 497.9 MJ/kg CF. Through the investigated scenarios, the relevant reduction potentials were identified. The presented results help close an existing data gap for high-quality, regionalized, and technology-specific LCA results for the production of CF.

Characterization methods of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSA) originate from technical bonding and do not cover relevant data for the development and quality assurance of medical applications, where PSA with flexible backing layers are adopted to human skin. In this study, a new method called RheoTack is developed to determine (mechanically and optically) an adhesion and detaching behavior of flexible and transparent PSA based patches. Transdermal therapeutic systems (TTS) consisting of silicone-based PSAs on a flexible and transparent backing layer were tested on a rotational rheometer with an 8 mm plate as a probe rod at retraction speeds of 0.01, 0.1, and 1 mm/s with respect to their adhesion and detaching behavior in terms of force-retraction displacement curves. The curves consist of a compression phase to affirm wetting; a tensile deformation phase intercepting stretching, cavity, and fibril formation; and a failure phase with detaching. Their analysis provides values for stiffness, force, and displacement of the beginning of fibril formation, force and displacement of the beginning of a failure due to fibril breakage and detaching, as well as corresponding activation energies. All these parameters exhibit the pronounced dependency on the retraction speed. The force-retraction displacement curves together with the simultaneous video recordings of the TTS deformation from three different angles (three cameras) provide deeper insight into the deformation processes and allow for interpreting the properties’ characteristics for PSA applications.

As food typically accounts for substantially higher resource use and potential environmental impacts than its packaging, packaging-related food wastage must be considered in environmental assessments of food packaging. However, this is not currently performed as standard in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This article proposes a conceptual framework as an approach to systematically integrating packaging functionality into LCA by incorporating packaging-related food wastage depending on shelf-life and due to technical emptiability. Based on literature data, a segmented non-linear regression is proposed to estimate shelf-life-dependent food wastage at retail level. Two exponential models provide a consistently decreasing relationship between shelf-life and food wastage, with S = 0.064 for products with ≤30 days shelf-life and S = 0.036 for >30 days shelf-life. These values indicate a satisfactory internal fit within both shelf-life segments. In addition, established experimental procedures for quantifying packaging emptiability are integrated to capture further packaging-related food wastage. The approach yields a pragmatic estimation of packaging-related food wastage that can be operationalized in packaging LCAs. Rather than predicting exact amounts of food wastage, the framework enables a more holistic, function-oriented assessment of food packaging by making environmental trade-offs between packaging design, shelf-life effects and emptiability transparent for screening-level LCA.

Spelt husk material is a novel packaging solution intended for equal applications as packaging made of expanded polystyrene (EPS). In the future, husk packaging could therefore at least partially substitute plastics in the packaging sector, helping to reduce the consumption of fossil resources and address the challenges surrounding plastic littering. To enhance the understanding of the environmental implications of their production better, various scenarios to produce husk packaging are being investigated with life cycle assessment (LCA) along the ISO 14040 series and compared with one another. The aim is to determine how the selection of different materials, production parameters and production processes affects the LCA of husk packaging. The study investigates two material mixtures, M1 and M2, with different binders, which are necessary for the desired adhesion between the husks in the material. Additionally, the environmental impacts of husk packaging are evaluated against conventional packaging made of EPS and corrugated board. Both benchmark materials are highly technologised and well‐established packaging materials compared to husk packaging. The findings indicate that the production of husk packaging has higher environmental impacts in the analysed EF3.1 impact categories such as climate change—total, resource use—fossils, eutrophication—freshwater, eutrophication—terrestrial and acidification for the functional unit (FU) of one corner protector. Notably, M2 reduces impacts per corner by 13.3% compared to M1 but remains significantly higher than EPS regarding the impact categories climate change—total and resource use—fossils. However, the husk packaging is already in the same order of magnitude regarding the environmental impacts. For the FU of 1 kg of material, the husk packaging already performs better in the impact categories climate change—total and resource use—fossils compared to the benchmarking material EPS. In addition, material developments and especially a scale‐up in the production of husk packaging are expected to provide a major lever when comparing it to the highly technologised products EPS and corrugated board. The study also explores optimisation scenarios, including the use of a future renewable electricity grid mix and weight reduction strategies. Switching to a renewable electricity mix reduces climate change by 47%; a 50% on‐site electricity reduction yields 24% savings; a 20% mass reduction yields 20% savings. Combining all measures can lower climate change by up to 58% and resource use—fossils by 57%. Additionally, husk packaging also provides benefits in terms of the end of life (EoL) and littering, especially when compared to EPS. In this regard, the properties biobased, biodegradable and the use of agricultural residues play a major role.