What is Life Cycle Assessment?
 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) models the complex interaction between
a product and the environment from cradle to grave. It is also known as Life
Cycle Analysis or Ecobalance.
Download our SimaPro
Introduction
to LCA (PDF, 1MB) for an extensive introduction in LCA, and the
Tutorial to start your first LCA example in the SimaPro demo.
There are two main steps in an LCA:
- Describe which emissions will occur and which raw materials are used
during the life of a product. This is usually referred to as the
inventory step.
- Assess what the impacts of
these emissions and raw material depletions are. This is referred to
as the impact
assessment step.
Why use LCA?
Governments and your
customers simply expect that companies pay attention to the
environmental properties of all products. EMAS, BS and ISO 14000 series
demand continuous improvement in your environmental management system.
LCA and its utilization for product/process improvement is the way to meet this demand.
LCA: A
stepwise approach
The LCA methodology is described in
detail by SETAC and
CML (University of Leiden). In SETAC's Code of Practice, it
is recommended that the LCA be split into five stages:
1.
Planning
- Statement of objectives
- Definition of the product and its alternatives
- Choice of
system boundaries
- Choice of environmental parameters
- Choice of aggregation and evaluation method
- Strategy for
data collection
2. Screening
- Preliminary
execution of the LCA
- Adjustment of plan
3.
Data collection and data treatment
- Measurements,
interviews, literature search, theoretical calculations, database
search, qualified guessing
- Computation of the inventory
table.
4. Evaluation
- Classification of the
inventory table into impact categories
- Aggregation within
the category (characterization)
- Normalization
- Weighting of different categories (valuation)
5.
Improvement assessment
- Sensitivity analysis
- Improvement priority and feasibility assessment
It is
generally recognized that the first stage is extremely important. The
result of the LCA is heavily dependent on the decisions taken in this
phase.
The screening LCA is a useful step to check the
goal-definition phase. After screening it is much easier to plan the
rest of the project.
SimaPro can be a very convenient tool for both screening LCA's and
full LCA's. With a software tool like SimaPro, the border is actually
rather vague. A screening LCA gradually becomes a full LCA as more data
are entered.
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