Life Cycle Assessment Handbook

A Guide for Environmentally Sustainable Products

Mary Ann Curran

• Publisher: Wiley-Scrivener
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118528273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Industrial Health & Safety
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The first book of its kind, the Life Cycle Assessment Handbook: A Guide for Environmentally Sustainable Products will become an invaluable resource for environmentally progressive manufacturers and suppliers, product and process designers, executives and managers, and government officials who want to learn about this essential component of environmental sustainability.

As the last several decades have seen a dramatic rise in the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in decision making, the interest in the life cycle concept as an environmental management and sustainability tool continues to grow. The LCA Handbook offers a look at the role that life cycle information, in the hands of companies, governments, and consumers, may have in improving the environmental performance of products and technologies. It concisely and clearly presents the various aspects of LCA in order to help the reader better understand the subject.

The content of the book was designed with a certain flow in mind. After a high-level overview to describe current views and state-of-the-practice of LCA, it presents chapters that address specific LCA methodological issues including creating life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment, and capturing eco-systems services. These are followed by example applications of LCA in the agri-food industry; sustainable supply chain management; solid waste management; mining and mineral extraction; forest products; buildings; product innovation; and sustainable chemistry and engineering.

The international success of the sustainability paradigm needs the participation of many stakeholders, including citizens, corporations, academia, and NGOs. The handbook links LCA and responsible decision making and how the life cycle concept is a critical element in environmental sustainability. It covers issues such as building capacity in developing countries and emerging economies so that they are more capable of harnessing the potential in LCA for sustainable development. Governments play a very important role with the leverage they have through procurement, regulation, international treaties, tax incentives, public outreach, and other policy tools. This compilation points to the clear trend for incorporating life cycle information into the design and development processes for products and policies, just as quality and safety concerns are now addressed throughout product design and development.

Chapter 1

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment: Background and Perspective

Gjalt Huppes¹ and Mary Ann Curran^2*

¹Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

²US Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has developed into a major tool for sustainability decision support. Its relevance is yet to be judged in terms of the quality of the support it provides: does it give the information as required, or could it do a better job? This depends very much on the questions to be answered. The starting point was the application to relatively simple choices, such as making technical changes in products and choosing one material over another, with packaging as a main example. This was then followed by the use of LCA in consumer choices. Over time, there has been a shift to more encompassing questions, such as the attractiveness of biofuels and the relevance of lifestyle changes. This chapter describes the ongoing discussions on issues that still need to be addressed, such as allocation, substitution data selection, time horizon, attributional versus consequential, rebound mechanisms, and so forth. The chapter then describes how LCA might develop in the future. There are important tasks ahead for the LCA community.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment, LCA, allocation, attributional, consequential, decision support

1.1 Historical Roots of Life Cycle Assessment

The concept of exploring the life cycle of a product or function initially developed in the United States in the Fifties and Sixties within the realm of public purchasing. Back then, use cost often carried the main share of the total cost. A first mention of the life cycle concept, by that name, is by Novick (1959) in a report by the RAND Corporation, focusing on Life Cycle Analysis of cost. Costs of weapon systems, a main application at that time, include not only the purchasing cost, or only the use cost. They also cover the cost of development and the cost of end-of-life operations. Life Cycle Analysis (not yet referred to as ‘Assessment’) became the tool for improved budget management, linking functionality to total cost of ownership. This was a first for government. Method issues and standardization questions soon followed. How should data on past performance be related to expected future performance? How is functionality defined? Can smaller systems like jet engines be taken out of overall airplane functioning? Should system boundaries encompass activities such as transport? How should accidents and mistakes be considered? How should overhead costs and multi-function processes be allocated? For public budget analysis, the life cycle approach led to general questions on methodology and standardization, as in Marks & Massey (1971), also linking to other “life cycle-like’ tools for analysis, especially cost-benefit analysis.

The life cycle concept rapidly spread to the private sector where firms struggled with similar questions. By 1985, a survey paper (Gupta & Chow, 1985) showed over six hundred explicit life cycle studies that had been published, all focusing on relating system cost to functionality. The methodology issues were treated in an operational manner, for example by Dhillon (1989). Optimizing system development and system performance became a core goal for the now broadly applied public and private life cycle analysis of cost.

There is now over a half a century of experience with function-based life cycle analysis of system costs, see the survey in Huppes et al. (2004), continuing in parallel with environmental Life Cycle Assessment, or environmental LCA (moving now from ‘Analysis’ to ‘Assessment’), and later to the life cycle concept related to Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Returning to these roots might be an interesting endeavor.

1.2 Environmental Life Cycle Concepts

This life cycle concept was already fully developed when environmental policy became a major issue in all industrialized societies, at the end of the Sixties and in the early Seventies. Environmental policies, mainly command-and-control type, were at first source-oriented with very substantial reductions in emissions being realized. It soon became clear that such end-of-pipe measures were increasingly expensive. However, other options were not easily introduced into the mainly command-and-control type regulatory framework as it had been developed. Shifts in mode of transport, for example, were clearly of broad environmental importance, but not easily brought into the regulations. The comparative analysis of such different techniques for a similar function was hardly developed in a practical way. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), as an example, was focused at projects that aim to maximize welfare. It was made obligatory for environmental regulatory programs in the US, starting in 1971 with Executive Order 20503, on Quality of Life. Adapted substantially by consecutive US presidents, it still is a main contender for environmental LCA in the public domain applications, and increasingly so in the European Union (EU) as well. Environmental LCA first developed relatively unobserved by the private sector, before having the name shortened to simply “LCA” at the end of the Eighties. Both CBA and LCA have a life cycle concept at their core. The major difference between them is that CBA specifies activities in time and then uses a discounting method, in line with dominant modes of economic analysis, which is similar to the Life Cycle Analysis of cost. LCA, on the other hand, uses a timeless steady-state type of system analysis, without discounting effects. CBA also quantifies environmental effects in economic terms and then discounts them. In modeling welfare effects of climate policies, for example, the discounting mode is dominant. That dynamic analysis seems superior to the static GWP (Global Warming Potential) analysis used in LCA. How to quantify environmental effects in an economic sense and how to discount effects spread across time remains a core issue in CBA, open to further public and scientific debate. In LCA the time frame discussion is hardly present. Looped processes are not, and cannot, be specified in time. The only explicit treatment of time is found in the consideration of the different environmental themes in GWP impacts, with scores being limited to 20, 50 or 100 years, and in the toxic effects of heavy metals and the like that are assumed to extend virtually to eternity. The time frame discussion, then, might be part of Interpretation, which is problematic in itself while also hardly any guidance is given in the ISO standards or in any of the instructional guides that followed.

It would be interesting to have a discourse on overlapping issues and strategic choices in the domains of Cost-Benefit Analysis; Life Cycle Analysis of costs; and environmental Life Cycle Assessment.

1.3 LCA Links to Environmental Policy

The conceptual jump from life cycle cost analysis to the first life cycle-based waste and energy analysis, and then to the broader environmental LCA (how we view LCA today) was made through a series of small steps. Documented history starts with the famous Coca Cola study from 1969, see Hunt and Franklin (1996), who were involved in LCA right from that start. The environmental focus was on resource use and waste management, not yet the broad environmental aspects that are usual in LCA now. The broad conceptual jump to environmental LCA as contrasted with Life Cycle Analysis of cost was made in the Eighties and formalized in the Nineties with the work of SETAC and the standardization in the 14040 Series of ISO, see Klöpffer (2006). From the start with the RAND Corporation in the end of the Fifties, the system to be analyzed was clear. It should cover the supply chain, including research and development, the use stage, and the processing of wastes from all stages, including end-of-life of the product analyzed.

The link to public policy was made based on concepts first developed in the Netherlands, in the Eighties at the Department of Environmental Management headed by Pieter Winsemius. After the first stage of environmental policy, with command-and-control instruments directed at main sources, there was a shift to a systems view, and to a more general formulation of environmental policy goals in the Dutch Environmental Policy Plans, see also Winsemius (1990, original 1986). This shift from a source-oriented to an effect-oriented approach created a domain for environmental LCA from an environmental policy point of view, as contrasted to a business long-term cost view or a consumer interest point of view. Winsemius coined the environmental themes approach now dominant in LCA, looking for integration over the environmental compartments policies regarding water, air and soil. His overall policy strategy was based on now familiar themes: Acidification; eutrophication; diffusion of (toxic) substances; disposal of waste; and disturbance (including noise, odour, and local-only air pollution). Somewhat later, further national policy themes were added: climate change; dehydration; and squandering.

The theme-oriented policy formed the basis for a broadened view on environmental policy, now covering complementary entries like volume policy, product policy and substance policy. In their implementation it was no longer only chimneys and sewers but also people and organisations: the target groups of environmental policy, several groups of producers and consumers. The responsibility for consequences of actions shifted to these target groups, which had to internalise the goals of environmental policy as specified using the themes approach. If, how, and why this internalization happened is a subject of much debate; see de Roo (2003) for a first analysis. For doing so, the new metrics of the themes were most appropriate, indicating the environmental performance of business and consumers in a unified collective framework, that of (generalized) public environmental policy. Private organizations may have ideas on what themes should constitute the impact assessment. It is the collective point of view that creates the relevance of LCA outcomes. The themes approach remained specifically Dutch for a short while only. It inspired environmental policy of the EU; see the historic survey by Liefferink (1997). It was incorporated in LCA in an operational manner beginning in the Nineties, as the Life Cycle Impact Assessment method now dominant in LCA, of course with additions and adaptations. In the US the themes approach was not dominant in environmental policy, with more emphasis there on CBA. That probably was the reason that the introduction of the themes approach in environmental LCA followed later there.

It is an open question now if and how Life Cycle Impact Assessment can be linked to environmental themes as goals of public policy. These goals might be – but need not be – the goals of a specific country or of the EU. Public policy goals set as targets, for example as emission reduction targets for a substance, lack the integrative power of the themes approach. Goals set as general welfare maximation lack the link to specific domains of action. Themes can make the link. Also because product systems and LCA increasingly become global, passing the policy goals of specific countries, the foundations for the themes in LCA impact assessment should be clarified.

1.4 Micro Applications of LCA Rising

The last decades have seen a startling rise in the production of LCAs. There are consultants in virtually all countries, many with an international orientation. Databases and software have become widely available. There also are interesting in-firm developments. Two Netherlands-based firms we happen to know have their internal LCA capacity well developed, Philips and Unilever. Procter and Gamble contributes a chapter to this book on their LCA operations. The Unilever example is enlightening. They regularly produce internal LCAs on virtually all of their products, having produced well over a thousand LCAs by now. They use the LCAs for product system improvement, reducing easily avoidable impacts. These may seem tiny per product, but may be substantial from a dynamic improvement point of view. Tea bags used to have zinc plated iron staples to connect the bag and the carton handle to the connecting thread. This gave a dominant contribution to the overall life cycle impact of the tea bag system. The staples were first replaced by a glue connection and in many cases now by a sewing connection. Such product system improvement forms the core of LCA use. However, when having so many equivalent LCAs, new more strategic applications become possible. Can strategies be developed to reduce environmental impact covering more than one product, with more general guidelines for product development? Such applications are now developing in Unilever, see the box. Similarly, Philips has developed strategic guidelines at an operational level regarding the use of materials, reducing the number in each product and phasing out those with the largest contribution to environmental impacts.

LCA, in its micro level application, is now a two decade-old success story. With all caveats following, we should not throw out the baby with the bath water. LCA is here to stay, and the child is still growing.

1.5 The Micro-Macro Divide

The core goal of environmental LCA as was established in the Nineties was to help improve environmental quality, with product policy – internalized, private, and also in public regulations – as one entry into environmental policy. That role is based on the assumption that improved micro environmental performance of a product-function system corresponds to an environmental improvement at the macro level. That macro level in principle is global society at large in its environmental impacts, as product systems increasingly span the world. When looking at the mechanisms that link shifts or developments in micro level behavior to macro level performance it is perfectly clear that there is no direct correspondence. Cycling as mode of transport has a minor fraction of the impacts of car transport per kilometer traveled, but also has a minor fraction of the costs. Some elements of this discrepancy may be covered by eco-efficiency analysis of these transport systems, expressing environmental impacts not per functional unit but per Euro spent. Such micro level scores don’t tell what the ultimate outcome of a shift to cycling in commuting will be. The income not spent on cars will be spent on something else, anything. The shift to cycling is also linked to a different spatial infrastructure, with different retail systems, different housing requirements, etc. Though one may be confident that this is all to the environmental good – there may be good reasons to believe so – that assessment is not just based on LCA. The analysis of the overall system effect can easily be set up in a way that cycling really is bad. If the income not spent on cars is assumed to be spent to a substantial degree on flight based holidays, the net environmental outcome of more cycling might well be negative. When reckoning with such behavioral mechanisms, the choice of mechanism will determine the outcome, quite haphazardly at the moment. So the question is if a strategy for analysis can be set up to include the most relevant mechanisms in an equitable way. The move towards consequential LCA is a possible step, but not the only one.

A core question is if dynamic, non-linear mechanisms can be incorporated in the comparative static or steady state framework of LCA, as consequential LCA. Or, should the micro level LCA technology system better be placed in a broader modeling system reckoning with income effects, dynamic market mechanisms, structural effects and constraints, and what more might be relevant? The modeling required definitely does not fit in the linear homogenous system of LCA based on matrix inversion for easy solutions. It seems wise to first investigate divergent cases with an open mind as to most relevant causalities, and to look into options for structured modeling later. Then a choice for micro-type consequential LCA might be substantiated, or not, or only for some applications.

1.6 Macro Level LCA for Policy Support

The use of LCA in public policy has been coming up, with an LCA-type of analysis being used. The domain of application of LCA has been that of specific product choices. However, the link to broader policy issues, never absent, seems on the rise. Biofuel, see below, is a major example, with unresolved discussion in the EU. The general feature of policy applications is that they should show how a change considered would work out, requiring an ex ante analysis of consequences of policy options, or an ex post analysis showing how a policy has worked out. In both cases we need to know ‘how the world would have been different.’ The functional unit with an arbitrary volume then is to be replaced by an analysis covering the total volumes. Policies tend to be set up in order to reach specified goals, not marginal effects of an unknown volume. Using traditional arbitrary-unit ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Environmental Life Cycle Assessment: Background and Perspective
• Chapter 2: An Overview of the Life Cycle Assessment Method – Past, Present, and Future
• Chapter 3: Life Cycle Inventory Modeling in Practice
• Chapter 4: Life Cycle Impact Assessment
• Chapter 5: Sourcing Life Cycle Inventory Data
• Chapter 6: Software for Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 7: Modeling the Agri-Food Industry with Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 8: Exergy Analysis and its Connection to Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 9: Accounting for Ecosystem Goods and Services in Life Cycle Assessment and Process Design
• Chapter 10: A Case Study of the Practice of Sustainable Supply Chain Management
• Chapter 11: Life Cycle Assessment and End of Life Materials Management
• Chapter 12: Application of LCA in Mining and Minerals Processing – Current Programs and Noticeable Gaps
• Chapter 13: Sustainable Preservative-Treated Forest Products, Their Life Cycle Environmental Impacts, and End of Life Management Opportunities: A Case Study
• Chapter 14: Buildings, Systems Thinking, and Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 15: Life Cycle Assessment in Product Innovation
• Chapter 16: Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool in Food Waste Reduction and Packaging Optimization – Packaging Innovation and Optimization in a Life Cycle Perspective
• Chapter 17: Integration of LCA and Life-Cycle Thinking within the Themes of Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
• Chapter 18: How to Approach the Assessment?
• Chapter 19: Integration of MCDA Tools in Valuation of Comparative Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 20: Social Life Cycle Assessment: A Technique Providing a New Wealth of Information to Inform Sustainability-Related Decision Making
• Chapter 21: Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis
• Chapter 22: Environmental Product Claims and Life Cycle Assessment
• Chapter 23: Building Capacity for Life Cycle Assessment in Developing Countries
• Chapter 24: Environmental Accountability: A New Paradigm for World Trade is Emerging
• Chapter 25: Life Cycle Knowledge Informs Greener Products
• Index