Thus, it is possible to find pallets made of wood (traditional), plastic, fiberglass, and combinations of raw materials such as wood-plastic ( Hassanzadeh-Amin et al. For example, the growing demand for these products has increased the extraction of raw materials to maintain and satisfy market requirements, increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to the long distances involved in transporting the products. Currently, their high demand in exports has required exploring new materials for their manufacture, which goes hand in hand with heterogeneity of environmental impacts in their production. Pallets are a common unitary loading platform in the world and allow the safe and efficient handling, storage, transportation, loading, and unloading of goods. The increase in export activities has demanded a series of inputs for its realization, being pallets one of the basic components in a country’s internal and external supply chain.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, ISO 14040, ISO 14067, free software, life cycle assessment, plastic pallets, wooden pallets. The ratio of 1:9 between the carbon footprint of wooden pallets concerning plastic pallets provides important data for decision making. The causes of the variation in the estimation of the carbon footprint with different software are specifically based on the databases with which they can work. The difference between the two pallets is mainly due to the environmental load of the raw materials. The results show that wood and plastic pallets have an average carbon footprint of 4,12 kg CO 2 eq and 38,85 kg CO 2 eq respectively. The functional unit is 1 pallet produced and the system boundary is from cradle to gate. This study follows the main guidelines of ISO standards as a reference framework. For this purpose, the Chilean market is taken as a reference. The objectives of this study are to compare the value of the carbon footprint generated by the local production of wooden and plastic pallets and to evaluate the variations in its quantification using different software.

That is why it is important to know the carbon footprint of these products. The safe and efficient transport of products in domestic and foreign markets is often carried out with the help of pallets made of various materials, such as wood or plastic, which goes hand in hand with different environmental performance in their production. In the particular case of Chile, it is the second economic activity that generates the greatest environmental impact. Transport is one of the activities that generates the highest CO 2 eq emissions.

Plastics databases for openlca