Life Cycle Assessment: From The Beginning To The Current State
Review Articles
Review
LCA
icles
Life Cycle Assessment
From the Beginning to the Current State
Walter K16pffer
Corresponding address: Prof. Dr. Walter K16pffer, C.A.U. GmbH, WG Assessment of Chemicals, Products and Systems,
Daimlerstr. 23, D-63303 Dreieich-Frankfurt, Germany
Abstract
The basic idea of LCA is that all environmental burdens connected with a product or service have to be assessed, back to the raw materials and down to waste removal. Therefore, the term "Life Cycle Assessment" is more precise than the
German "Okobilanz" or the French "&obilan". This basic idea is undoubtedly true, and LCA is the only environmental assessment tool which avoids positive ratings for measurements which only consists in …show more content…
data, allocation rules for coproducts and open-loop recycling, aggregation)
9 the kind of impact assessment and valuation
9 the group(s) to be addressed by the study (internal, marketing, general public, politics...)
9 Peer (Expert) Review [6-8]
Since the standards which are now being developed by
ISO [7,9-11] are flexible and not very detailed, the goaldefinition phase is of paramount importance for defining the special choice of elements. In some cases, only a Life
Cycle Inventory (LCI) is performed for improvement, benchmarking and the later use for full LCA [12]. This generic data material is of special importance in the case of materials and commodities, energy and transportation. Also for valuation and peer-reviewing, goal definition gives the yardstick for scrutinizing the internal consistency of the study. 3.2 Inventory Analysis
Inventory analysis is the central, best developed and most scientific component of LCA [6,9,13,14]. It is relatively well known and has been used from the beginning.
Fig. 1: SETAC-triangle
9
9
9
9
Goal definition and …show more content…
The same is true for the sum of solid wastes.
Table 1: List of categories
Impact Categories According to SETAC-Europe [20]
A: Input related categories
("resource depletion or competion")
Abiotic resources (deposits, flows)
Biotic resources
3.3 Impact Assessment (LCIA)
A stand-alone Life Cycle Inventory (LCI: goal definition and scoping + inventory analysis) can provide useful information for product improvements, benchmarking, energy savings, and emission reduction. The LCI is, however, not sufficient for the comparative assessment of product systems [6,10,17-20]. For this important application as well as for a deeper understanding of the systems investigated, a formal impact assessment has to be performed. The earlier
Swiss method of the "Critical Volumes" [21] has now been replaced by the method of "Impact Categories", originally proposed by CML (Centre of Environmental Science,
Leiden University) [22] and now adopted by SETACEurope [20]. Table 1 shows the recent list of categories.
Land
B: Output related categories ("pollution")
Greenhouse gases
Depletion of stratospheric
Review
LCA
icles
Life Cycle Assessment
From the Beginning to the Current State
Walter K16pffer
Corresponding address: Prof. Dr. Walter K16pffer, C.A.U. GmbH, WG Assessment of Chemicals, Products and Systems,
Daimlerstr. 23, D-63303 Dreieich-Frankfurt, Germany
Abstract
The basic idea of LCA is that all environmental burdens connected with a product or service have to be assessed, back to the raw materials and down to waste removal. Therefore, the term "Life Cycle Assessment" is more precise than the
German "Okobilanz" or the French "&obilan". This basic idea is undoubtedly true, and LCA is the only environmental assessment tool which avoids positive ratings for measurements which only consists in …show more content…
data, allocation rules for coproducts and open-loop recycling, aggregation)
9 the kind of impact assessment and valuation
9 the group(s) to be addressed by the study (internal, marketing, general public, politics...)
9 Peer (Expert) Review [6-8]
Since the standards which are now being developed by
ISO [7,9-11] are flexible and not very detailed, the goaldefinition phase is of paramount importance for defining the special choice of elements. In some cases, only a Life
Cycle Inventory (LCI) is performed for improvement, benchmarking and the later use for full LCA [12]. This generic data material is of special importance in the case of materials and commodities, energy and transportation. Also for valuation and peer-reviewing, goal definition gives the yardstick for scrutinizing the internal consistency of the study. 3.2 Inventory Analysis
Inventory analysis is the central, best developed and most scientific component of LCA [6,9,13,14]. It is relatively well known and has been used from the beginning.
Fig. 1: SETAC-triangle
9
9
9
9
Goal definition and …show more content…
The same is true for the sum of solid wastes.
Table 1: List of categories
Impact Categories According to SETAC-Europe [20]
A: Input related categories
("resource depletion or competion")
Abiotic resources (deposits, flows)
Biotic resources
3.3 Impact Assessment (LCIA)
A stand-alone Life Cycle Inventory (LCI: goal definition and scoping + inventory analysis) can provide useful information for product improvements, benchmarking, energy savings, and emission reduction. The LCI is, however, not sufficient for the comparative assessment of product systems [6,10,17-20]. For this important application as well as for a deeper understanding of the systems investigated, a formal impact assessment has to be performed. The earlier
Swiss method of the "Critical Volumes" [21] has now been replaced by the method of "Impact Categories", originally proposed by CML (Centre of Environmental Science,
Leiden University) [22] and now adopted by SETACEurope [20]. Table 1 shows the recent list of categories.
Land
B: Output related categories ("pollution")
Greenhouse gases
Depletion of stratospheric