Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Description

Polylactic Acid (PLA) is a biodegradle thermoplast (in the polyester family) that is derived from natural sources, such as corn starch or sugar cane. It is produced using open ring polymerization. Inventory refers to the production of 1 kg PLA. It is based on data from the world largest PLA plant. The inventories include the LCI data from the report of the producer NatureWorks. In this publication only aggregated data are reported.

Impacts

	Impact area	MSI Score
	Global Warming	3.8
	Eutrophication	6.9
	Water Scarcity	6.7
	Abiotic Resource Depletion, Fossil Fuels	3.4
	Chemistry	Scored per material rather than production stage. Click on "Return to Material", and learn about Chemistry scoring under "Chemistry Certifications".

Modeling Notes

Polylactide, granulate {GLO}| market for | Alloc Def, S. Includes 5% loss of raw material to account for yield losses. Also includes 1000km inbound shipping distance to account for shipment of raw materials.

Meta information

Primary Source: ecoinvent 3.3
Last Publication or Review date: 2011
Geography: Global/generic
Data Generator: Cashion East, Pivot Analytics; east@pointpivot.com

Applicable Materials

Material	Impact benchmarkimpactblend components
Polylactic Acid (PLA) fabric	54 Textiles
Polylactic Acid (PLA) plastic	40 Plastics

Data quality

Data Quality	Value	Description
Precision	Fair	20% to 30%	3
Time Representativeness	Good	Data are not older than 6 years with respect to the release date or latest review date	2
Geographical Representativeness	Good	The processes included in the dataset are well representative for the geography stated in the title and metadata	2
Technological Representativeness	Good	The technologies modeled are included in the mix of technologies covered by the dataset	2
Average			2.25

Polylactic acid (PLA), bio-based