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ECO-DESIGN ACTIONS TO IMPROVE LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF FACE MASKS IN THE PANDEMIC ERA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Núria Boix Rodríguez ,
Marco Marconi ,
Claudio Favi  and
Giovanni Formentini
Núria Boix Rodríguez*
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Parma
Marco Marconi
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi della Tuscia
Claudio Favi
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Parma
Giovanni Formentini
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Parma
*
Boix Rodríguez, Núria, Università degli Studi di Parma, Department of Engineering and Architecture, Italy, nuria.boixrodriguez@unipr.it

Abstract

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Face masks are currently considered essential devices that people must wear today and in the near future, until the COVID-19 pandemic will be completely defeated through specific medicines and vaccines. Such devices are generally made of thermoplastic polymers, as polypropylene and polyethylene and are single use products. Even if in this period the sanitary emergency must have the maximum priority, the world society should not completely forget the environmental problem that are causing more and more obvious climate changes with correlated damages to ecosystems and human health. Despite the well-known correlation among anti-COVID protective equipment (or more generally medical devices) and environmental issues, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and eco-design-based studies in this field is very scarce. The present study aims to derive the most important environmental criticalities of such products, by using LCA and product circularity indicators of five different common masks. The final aim is to provide eco-design guidelines, useful to design new face masks by preventing negative impact on the environment.

Keywords

Face maskEcodesignCOVID-19Circular economySustainability
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 1: ICED21 , August 2021 , pp. 1333 - 1342
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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