Life cycle assessment of plastic and paper-based ultra high frequency RFID tags

The aim of the work is to assess the environmental impacts of Ultra High Frequency RFID tags. Through a Life Cycle Assessment approach, two case studies have been investigated, namely a standard plastic and a paper-based tags. Primary data on tags’ components, manufacturing and transportation were collected, while secondary data for the raw materials processing and tags’ end of life were retrieved. The Recipe Midpoint method was used to evaluate the impacts. Results show that, for both tags, the greatest contributions to global warming, terrestrial acidification, mineral and fossil resource scarcity are due to raw material extraction (more than 50%) and manufacturing phase (30–50%), which resulted impactful also on the ionizing radiation (70%). Interestingly, the paper tag allows to save up to 23% of the greenhouse gas emissions and decreases the impact on the above-mentioned categories, resulting the eco-friendly option. The conclusion of the work contributes to update the scientific literature, still poor in RFID environmental evaluations, and are useful for researchers interested in comparing the traditional handling systems’ impacts to the RFID scenario. Furthermore, the outcomes will be used as input for subsequent research, aimed at developing a tool to measure the return on the environment of RFID deployments.