1. Welcome to … The University of Plymouth Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre Workshop on Life Cycle Assessment of Composites

2. Location This room Fire exits Toilets Lunch

3. Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre (ACMC) Composites research since 1967 Focus on manufacturing in the eighties NAB-funded ACMC launched 1987 BEng Composite Engineering in 1990 BSc Marine and Composites Tech, 2001 Now: >2000 delegates on short courses

4. Commercial activity (examples)

5. Your chairman for the day … BSc Chemistry/Polymer – UWIST (now Cardiff) MSc Physics – Thames (now Greenwich) PhD Mech/Materials Eng – Plymouth Composites structures research – RNEC Manufacturing technology transfer - ACMC PGDipEd – Plymouth increasing interest in quality/ sustainability issues

6. Your chairman (continued) CSci – Chartered Scientist IEng – Incorporated Engineer FIMMM, FInstNDT, FIAQP EPSRC Peer Review College CIMNFC Programme Steering Committee DTI Technology Programme assessor Why I organised this meeting after …

7. Time to introduce yourselves Affiliation Role Why this meeting ? What do you hope to take away ?

8. Natural vs man-made fibres Natural + Carbon neutral -fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides -variable quality -dispersed production Man-made fibres + uniformity of product -high-energy production processes

9. Thermoplastics vs thermosets Thermoplastics + recycle at similar duty -high process temperatures -use limited to process temperature - 200°C Thermosets + low process temperatures + usable at temperatures close to process - re-use limited as fillers

10. End of life Reuse Design for dis-assembly Recycle Pyrolysis Incineration Landfill

11. Drivers: producer responsibility End of Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive (2000/53/EC) Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (2002/96/EC) o largely driven by landfill considerations o thermosets are difficult to recycle o but thermoplastics use high temp processes

12. Life cycle assessment very diverse options are available for the design and manufacture of composites most LCA are qualitative can we compare chalk and cheese in a quantitative way ?

13. Sustainability Three considerations: oEconomic oEnvironmental oSocial Can we derive one number for each of the above and take an arithmetic mean ?

14. Programme 10:00John Summerscales (ACMC) The context for the meeting 10:30Ian Law (National Non-Food Crops Centre) Natural material sources for composite materials 11:45Ian Hamerton (University of Surrey) Thermoplastics vs thermosetting resins 13:00Lunch 14:00Stephen Pickering (University of Nottingham) Routes to recycling or disposal of thermoset composites 15:15Paul Thistlethwaite (BRE Environment) A methodology for (quantitative) life cycle assessment 16:30 Close

15. Philosophy Today, March 2005 Ben Basing on Our Responsibility to Future Generations “… the major issue in valuing things for future generations, is the fact that different people value the same thing differently and the same person might give the same thing different values at different times ….. we will have real problems trying to assess what will be of value to people living in an inevitably changed world”.

16. From QCC Code of Conduct “the only stupid question is the one that is not asked” Samuel Ho “Operations and Quality Management” Thomson Business Press, 1999, page 197.