Abstract
When we evaluate a key technology for a global environmental issue, we must draw a conclusion considering all the impacts on the environment throughout whole product lifecycle. However, an aggregation of conventional product-oriented lifecycle analyses for individual products, which are interactively produced, is not sufficient for objective evaluation.
In this paper, we propose a new method for the evaluation of technologies using systems approach. The method consists of two steps; total effect indexes are first calculated, then the system is evaluated from the viewpoint in which an investigator is interested. With this method, we could avoid allocating the effect of the technology to several products, thus the technology is evaluated focusing on the effect in the whole system. As a case study, several recycle systems of PET bottle were analyzed. Quantitative analysis from the viewpoints of CO2 emission and crude oil consumption showed the effectiveness of those recycle systems as well as the availability of the proposed method.
