Environmental Research and Technology

Yazarlar: Nilay CAMBAZ, E. Gamze TASKİN, Ali RUZGAR

Konular:Çevre Mühendisliği

Anahtar Kelimeler:Carbon Footprint,Environment,Life Cycle Assessment (LCA),Office Waste

Özet: Environmental problems have become today’s most emphasized issues due to the unconscious use of natural resources and the ongoing increase in consumption resulted in an increased level of environmental pollution. Offices, where most of the daily time is being consumed in today’s modern world, generate the important amount of daily wastes and increase the environmental burden. In this respect, it is important to investigate and to reveal their environmental impacts. In this study, the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) of an office has been conducted in order to investigate the environmental impacts caused by a typical office and to reveal carbon footprint of an office staff. The water and energy consumption (electricity and natural gas), transportation, and business travel data were obtained based on the real consumptions of the organization, while data required for the calculation of the waste amount (paper, cardboard, plastic etc.) were provided from literature. Afterwards, data obtained for office have been run into SimaPro Analyst 8.0.2 software in order to calculate carbon footprint and to analyze the environmental impacts. As a result of the calculations made, the carbon footprint of the office has been found as 10 5 kg CO 2 -eq year -1 and the carbon footprint of an office staff has been determined as 5263.16 kg CO 2 - eq year -1 , accordingly. The obtained results have indicated that the highest share in terms of carbon dioxide emission is caused by electricity consumption, followed by transportation, business travel, office consumables, electronic devices, natural gas consumption, office wastes, water consumption, and electronic wastes, respectively.

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