A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Antibacterial Gel Production

During the COVID-19 pandemic the antibacterial gel become an important prevention measures to stop the spread of the virus. In Mexico, the demand for preventive hygiene products and health supplies increased more than 50% at the beginning of the pandemic. With the concern of knowing the negative impacts that the high demands of this product can cause to the environment, we took on the task of looking for life cycle assessment (LCA) studies related to the production of antibacterial gel, it was unexpected not to find any scientific information reported about the subject. This paper takes as one of its main motivation the lack of information to accomplish an LCA which is used to evaluate the negative environmental impacts associated with the products or services. The aim of this paper is elaborate an LCA study of the antibacterial gel, a substance widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic, to assess the environmental impacts from its production. We focus on a case study involving the antibacterial gel from a company in Mexico. We completed the inventory analysis in collaboration with the company and compiled the impact assessments using the GaBi software and the ReCiPe method. The results shows that the principal impact categories of the antibacterial gel production are the Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, Fossil Depletion and Human Toxicity.