| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 環境工程與管理研究所 === 99 === Global warming has constantly been regarded as a major threat to sustainable development. Thus, reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions entails committed action through sustainable management practices based on a life cycle perspective. This approach is expected to aid in the effective implementation of carbon reduction. A product service system (PSS) is a new business model that has been adopted by many companies and is currently widely used in developed countries. When designed properly, the PSS can achieve not just economic benefits but also many environmental benefits such as dematerialization and carbon reduction.
Currently, almost every household owns various types of appliances such as washing machines. Along with lifestyle changes, self-service laundries have become a prevalent PSS. This study investigates carbon emissions from traditional laundry practices (i.e., the use of domestic appliances) and self-service laundry (i.e., PSS mode) by life cycle assessment. We compare the life cycle carbon emissions of a community with 360 households, each owning a washing machine, with those of commercial coin-operated laundromat with five self-service commercial washing machines. This ratio was determined from an interview with an actual self-service laundry owner. The total frequency of washing using domestic appliances is 208 times per year. Two life span scenarios of washing by domestic appliance (i.e., seven years) and commercial coin-operated laundromat (i.e., 21 years) were considered for the comparison.
Results show that for the first scenario, the total carbon emissions from traditional laundry practice amount to 155,276 kgCO2-e, with the highest emissions at 37.4% during the use stage, followed by 35.5% in the manufacturing stage and 26.9% in the raw material stage. The emissions from the transportation and waste stages account for only 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively. The total carbon emissions from self-service commercial laundry amount to 64,310 kgCO2-e, which mostly stems from the use stage (74.8%), followed by the manufacturing stage (19%). Conversely, for the 21-year scenario, the total carbon emissions from traditional laundry practice and self-service commercial laundry reach 465,830 kgCO2-e and 160,532 kgCO2-e, respective. The total carbon emissions from the PSS mode (commercial laundry) decrease when the ratio of households that adopt commercial laundry services increase. The threshold ratio of the number of households (each owning a washing machine) to the number of commercial washing machines that can reflect the minimum value of carbon emissions from the PSS mode is 11:1.
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