For several decades now, plastic materials have been used more and
more in many sectors both for supporting and for aesthetic elements. In
particular, the automotive industry had the opportunity of exploiting their
typical performances like their low weight, their ability of taking complex
geometries, their flexibility, their aptitude of giving good quality surfaces, their
low production cost.
Such features helped it to answer to requirements, challenges and globalization
of the market. Also the reduction of environmental impacts related to
production, use and disposal of them was considered as an important goal
during recent years.
With the aim of investigating some alternatives for plastic component
production, the paper shows the comparison between some different ways of
molding them using the LCA methodology. Such approach is introductory to
the evaluation of a specific component not having a complex geometry, but
considered useful to catch the initial target of the comparison.
