dr zoe robinson, keele university, [email protected] greening business: an online teaching...

Dr Zoe Robinson, Keele University, [email protected] Business: An online teaching resource. www.esci.keele.ac.uk/greeningbusiness

Greening Business: An Greening Business: An online teaching resourceonline teaching resource

Session 3Session 3: Life Cycle Analysis

Suggested session outline


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Session outline

1. What is Life Cycle Analysis?

2. Why is Life Cycle Analysis used?

3. What are the difficulties associated with Life Cycle Analysis?

4. Case studies


What is Life Cycle Analysis?

Life Cycle Analysis involves ‘cradle to grave’ considerations (Photo: Stephen

Whitfield)


Why consider Life Cycle Analysis??


Barriers to adopting a LCA approach

There are several barriers to adopting a LCA approach (Photo: Zoe Robinson)


Life Cycle Analysis considerations

Impa

ct

Res

ourc

e ex

trac

tion

Man

ufac

turin

g

Use

Dis

posa

l

Tra

nspo

rt

An LCA allows the impacts at different stages of a product’s lifecycle to be

determined, helping future ‘greening’ efforts to focus on the areas of greatest impact


LCA considerationsLCA considerations

Raw materials and energy

Extraction and processing of raw materials

ManufactureDistribution and retailing

Use, reuse & maintenance

Waste management

Functional outputs; emissions to air, water,

land

Adapted from IEMA (2005)Adapted from IEMA (2005)


Impacts

A wide range of impacts can be considered in an LCA (Source: Foto43

(flickr.com))


Using Life Cycle Analysis

TIME

There has been a growth in the number of databases available

for use in LCAs


Requirements of an LCA

LCAs are carried out at different scales and can be done ‘in house’ (Source:

morticide (flickr.com))


The limitations of LCA

Setting boundaries is an important part of designing an achievable LCA


Reporting on a LCA


Carrying out an LCA

Carrying out an LCA first involves defining the purpose, audience and

boundaries (Source: The Marque (flickr.com))


1) Defining the goal

A life cycle analysis flow chart for milk from farming processes to household

consumption – where are the boundaries of your study?


2) Collecting the data (Inventory analysis)

Process stage

Emission type (mg)

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Total

Dust 1100 600 9 1709

CO 220 730 110 1060

CO2 470,000 2,100,000 21,000 2.6 x 106

SOx 3100 7400 230 10730

NOx 4000 7700 180 11880

HCl 26 <1 - 26

Methane 8100 2700 - 10800

Example of an inventory table relating to release to air from the manufacture of 1 kg

of product X


3) Assessing the impact

Examples of impact categories and indicators

Example impact categories

Example Indicator

Global climate change Global warming potential (GWP) in CO2 equivalents

Acidification Loading of acidification potential as H+ equivalents

Eutrophication Loading of nutrients and organic substances that may decrease oxygen

Photochemical smog Loading of VOC emissions as photochemical ozone formation potential and NOx

Human toxicity No agreed indicator - may include carcinogens etc.

Resources Depletion rate of each mineral resource


Production considerations

Transportation of raw material may be just one of many production

considerations in an LCA


Usage considerations

Scrap metal – the end point of the life cycle of many products. The

durability of a product is an important consideration in life cycle analysis

(Source: ahisgett (Flickr))


Disposal considerations

What happens to a product at the end of it’s ‘life’ may have a big effect on a

product’s overall life cycle impact (Photo: nicholas.boullosa (Flickr.com))


References and further resourcesReferences and further resources Centre for Sustainable Design: facilitates discussion and research on eco-design

and environmental, economic, ethical and social considerations in product and service development and design www.cfsd.org.uk

Ecocycle: newsletter covering LCA developments including evaluation of LCA software tools www.ec.gc.ac/ecocycle

IEMA (2005) Environmental Management in Organizations. Earthscan. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/112849/ Pacific Institute (2007) Hummer versus Prius. “Dust to dust” report misleads the

media and public with bad science www.pacinst.org/topics/...of.../hummer_versus_prius.html

Rocky Mountain Institute (undated) Checking Dust to Dust assumptions about the Prius and Hummer http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Transportation/T07-01_DustToDust.pdf

Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) http://www.setac.org/ SimaPro LCA software http://www.pre.nl/simapro/ Unilever (2009). Life Cycle Assessment (contains links to several LCA reports)

http://www.unilever.com/sustainability/environment/manufacturing/lifecycleassessment/

dr zoe robinson, keele university, [email protected] greening business: an online teaching...

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