These activities generated a lot of waste and entailed a large amount of water and many chemical reagents (e.g. potassium hydroxide, KOH). Their impacts are relevant in many categories (particularly in Human- and Eco-toxicity, Photochemical ozone formation, Acidification, Terrestrial/Freshwater/Marine eutrophication and resource depletion). Their contribution ranges from 3 to 64% for KOH, and from 18 to 56% for lampante oil and its mainly due to the emission of chromium VI and antimony in water, which are significant for both lampante and KOH. Potassium hydroxide is employed in the saponification reaction: this stage allows removing, in the form of soaps, the unsaturated triglycerides, during the last step of the manufacturing chain. From the information available, it was not possible to determine whether this very huge fraction (unsaturated triglycerides) was simply removed as waste or recycled in other supply chains as by-product. In absence of more detailed information, we adopted a worst case assumption, treating it as waste.
In addition, chloramine emission in water coming from lampante manufacturing and vanadium emission in air coming from electricity production are significant in ecotoxicity results as well.
3.2. Comparisons of formulations
In order to quantify the improvements related to the new ingredient employment within the formulation, a comparison among Benchmark, Innovation I, and Innovation II supply chains was performed (Table 4), including water and energy consumption and transports.