Environmental Assessment of International Transportation of Products

Globalization has allowed goods and services to become increasingly available anywhere in the world. International transport is an essential part of globalization. This paper focuses on the evaluation of air emissions accompanying international transport of goods. The main method in performing the assessment of emissions is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, the case study will only deal with the transport of the product from the manufacturer to the intermediate user as the dealer. Results show that carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides are the leading pollutants, which affect air quality. The truck is shown to be a heavy polluter in terms of its emission factors and it does not differ much between a European and an Asian country. Alternative fuels from the sensitivity analyses show that it can significantly lower the emissions. Acidification potential is the major environmental impact from the transport of the product.