The choice to recycle

With regard to the rules for comparison on the end-of-life stages. Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur le cycle de vie des produits, precedes et services (CIRAIG) draws our attention to the relevance of comparing different recovery scenarios. Indeed, it is normally impossible to directly compare the environmental impacts generated by two means of recovery of a product. If we want to process 

Expanded system 1 recovery of paper by recycling and energy production 

Expanded system 2 recovery paper by energy harvesting and paper production 

in the first case - that of paper recycling - in evaluating the impacts, we must also take account of the production ofXMJ of electricity in the local conditions for conventional electricity production. In the second case - that of thermal energy harvesting - we also need to consider the conventional production of 7 kg of paper from wood, when evaluating the impacts. We can then perform a vahd comparison of two systems which have the same products 7 kg of paper andXMJ of electricity. 

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