Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Techniques & Resources
What is Life Cycle Assessment?
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analytical tool used to quantify and interpret flows to and from the environment over the entire life cycle of a product or service. By analyzing impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the product or process, and an accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs inherent in decisions and product selections.
Your intended application and audience for your LCA endeavors will guide the appropriate type and level of assessment.
Learn more about the different types of LCA and their applications and explore helpful resources about LCA.
What it is:
A screening-level LCA or “hotspot analysis” will identify where your biggest impacts originate. This allows you to focus your investment dollars and maximize the reduction of your environmental footprint. It is the most cost effective way to gain a high level view of your product's environmental footprint.
When to use it:
- To understand where the majority of impacts are occurring in your product’s life cycle
- A cost-effective means to quickly identify the environmental hotspots in your product design or supply chain
What it is:
A ISO-compliant LCA for a single product or multiple products
When to use it:
- To establish a baseline of the product(s) environmental footprint for use as a benchmark for future assessments of similar products
- To respond to customer requests for more comprehensive information regarding the environmental performance of your product(s)
What it is:
ISO standards require third-party critical review of your comparative LCA. A multi-product life cycle assessment/comparative LCA is an ISO-compliant LCA that refines your screening LCA and provides a report that is ready for critical review.
If you intend to publish the results of your LCA, or use it to support marketing claims or comparative assertions, ISO 14044 requires that LCA studies undergo a third-party critical review process prior to publication.
When to use it:
- To determine how one product compares with another, or with its competition
- To make a marketing claim and state that one product is environmentally preferable to another
What it is:
An O-LCA, as defined by ISO/TS 14072, “is a compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and potential environmental impacts of the activities associated with the organization adopting a life cycle perspective.” O-LCA analyzes the whole organization, including not only the operations of the organization, but also its upstream and downstream activities.
When to use it:
- An O-LCA is effective for quantifying the average inputs and outputs necessary for an organization’s operation and enabling the calculation of the type and amount of environmental impact at each stage of operation.
- Organizational LCA (O-LCA) provides organizations with a measured understanding of the organization’s environmental impact at the level at which most of the decisions are made —the level of the organization.
What it is:
Anticipatory LCA is an advanced LCA approach designed to improve decision making in the early stages of the design process. Anticipatory LCA can be applied as a design tool to explore the environmental variability of alternative technology configurations and applications. This is especially beneficial in the design phases when data is uncertain and fast changing and limits a full traditional LCA.
When to use it:
- To integrate environmental criteria into the technology development process in a way that anticipates foreseeable negative consequences, identifies opportunities for improving the environmental profile of emerging technologies, and communicates findings to R&D decision-makers in time to reorient research.
- To provide leverage for lowest-cost impact reduction through Design for Sustainability (DfS).
What it is:
An ISO 14040 analysis to evaluate and communicate the environmental impacts of packaging
When to use it:
- To quantify the environmental impacts of your package
- To integrate environmental assessment into your design process
- To support a strong sustainability story for your new package
Author: Harnoor Dhaliwal, Certified LCA Consultant
Part II – Modeling Exposure: Intake and Bioavailability
Part III – Modeling Effects and Conclusion
Life Cycle Assessment: Quantitative Approaches for Decisions that Matter
This free book has been written by an established team of LCA professionals with 20 years of combined experience teaching LCA, and 50 years of performing LCA studies and research. The authors are H. Scott Matthews, Chris T. Hendrickson, and Deanna H. Matthews, professors at Carnegie Mellon University. Its free availability has been done with students in the developing world in mind. While produced with academic audiences in mind, other interested parties can access the content to learn about LCA. The textbook is the centerpiece of a comprehensive collection of unique learning resources leveraging free data and methods, such as the US LCI database. We encourage educators and users to contribute their own resources to be shared on this website.
http://www.lcatextbook.com/ - Free Download
LCA Capability Roadmap with SETAC North America
The SETAC North America LCA Advisory Board is actively working on a Capability Roadmap for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Current Activities:
Roadmap topics are in various stages of development.
Completed Roadmaps:
- RoadMap_Supporting Decision Makers with LCA June 12, 2015 (PDF) http://www.setac.org
- RoadMap_Product System Model Description and Revision
Both roadmaps can also be found here.
Municipal Waste/Materials Management Data
The US EPA commissions studies of our waste management every year. The resulting reports are useful for LCA purposes because they include the amount and percent of each type of material recycled, incinerated, and landfilled. The results are also given in different sectors including packaging and white goods.
Studies, Summary Tables, and Data Related to the Advancing Sustainable Materials Management Report
(https://www.epa.gov/smm/studies-summary-tables-and-data-related-advancin...)
(https://www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts...)
Environmental Science & Technology (http://pubs.acs.org/journal/esthag)
International Journal of LCA (http://link.springer.com/journal/11367)
Journal of Industrial Ecology (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1530-9290 )
Journal of Cleaner Production (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production/)
The Journal of Responsible Innovation (JRI) (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjri20?open=1&repitition=0#vol_1)
ReCiPe2016
The primary objective of the ReCiPe method, is to transform the long list of Life Cycle Inventory results, into a limited number of indicator scores. These indicator scores express the relative severity on an environmental impact category. In ReCiPe we determine indicators at two levels:
- Eighteen midpoint indicators
- Three endpoint indicators
USEtox 2.0
The USEtox model has been developed by the USEtox Team, a team of international researchers from the Task Force on Toxic Impacts under the auspices of UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative.