LCA - Help Or Headache?(A review of progress towards full Life Cycle Assessment) About the author Estelle Hook began her career as an engineering graduate in the automotive industry but left in order to complete an environmental MSc. She is now combining her engineering and environmental experience through the application of Design for the Environment practices, including Life Cycle Assessment techniques, within Lucas Industries plc. She is in her second year of the four year Brunel/Surrey Universities' Engineering Doctorate in Environmental Technology and is a member of the environmental design forum, ECO2-IRN.
The application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to provide a thorough analysis of all the environmental impacts of a product, process or service throughout its life. However, there remains much work to be completed before it is possible to apply a full LCA in all but a few cases. In the mean time, a number of organisations are using a variety of approaches in the attempt to apply restricted forms of LCA. An Environmental Aid To Design Traditional design criteria focus on the product attributes during use (such as quality, reliability and weight) and give some consideration to manufacturing processes. If this limited view of the product is adapted to include environmental issues, it will fail to recognise the full environmental consequences of a product through-out every stage of its life (from 'cradle to grave', see Fig. 1). These consequences include all the impacts associated with the acquisition of the raw materials, the product manufacture, transport, useful life and disposal - including any recycling or reuse options. Any attempt at analysis of all these factors is obviously a highly complex exercise which is normally limited to consideration of the most significant only. It is further complicated by the fact that damage often occurs at a distance, whether spatial or temporal, from its initiation. Fig.1 An important part of future environmental strategy is recognised to be the expansion of environmental analysis to cover the whole life of the product. This requires the successful development of a measurement and decision tool which can provide a workable method to control this analysis and which can assess environmental consequences of current actions, compare future routes and provide a guide for improvement. This tool should provide consistent and useful results, encompassing all significant factors, within a reasonable time scale. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed by academia in response to these desires. It is defined by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) as 'an objective process used to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment, and ...to evaluate and implement opportunities to affect environmental improvements' 1.In order to completely satisfy this definition, an LCA must take into account all environmental effects through-out the entire life cycle of the product (from cradle to grave). To enable such a comprehensive study, LCA has been divided into four key components: Initiation - including the definition of an end objective, the specification of the functional unit, the construction of a system flow diagram and the definition of system boundaries Inventory analysis - the collection of data for all inputs (raw materials and energy) and outputs (products and solid, liquid and gaseous emissions) at each stage of the process Impact assessment - a technical and/or qualitative process to examine the potential and actual environmental effects of the environmental loadings identified in the inventory component Improvement analysis - identification, evaluation and reporting of improvement options The paradigm shift created by LCA (with the movement within industry from traditional narrow design boundaries towards a total life cycle concept) should not be underestimated but the development of LCA methodology is by no means complete. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) is currently attempting to construct standards for use by LCA practitioners (ISO 14040/41/42/43), 2. All are either in preliminary draft format or have yet to be written. The appointed committees consist of representatives from a wide range of organisations and countries with LCA interests. They are experiencing difficulty in coming to a consensus spanning the wide range of opinions on LCA practice. Several basic principles and practicalities of LCA remain to be defined, including:
Information Databases The solution to many of the problems of LCA depend on continuing clarification of methodology over time. However, one powerful way to reduce timing and data problems within the Inventory Analysis stage is to develop large, generic databases; to provide readily accessible information about processes outside the control of the individual manufacturer. At present, there are a number of databases available on the commercial market. These have been developed for a limited number of specific products and processes, mainly in the chemical and packaging industries. Though their range of information is constantly growing, they do not yet include the necessary information to make them applicable to all industrial processes. There are a number of organisations marketing these LCA databases, including:
The databases have been found to vary considerably in:
A selection were exhibited and examined at the software show, ESD95, and several demonstration versions acquired. The first impressions are summarised in Table 1.
In the future, it appears that the ideal use of LCA databases will work from two angles:
Summary of LCA Problems At present, most completed LCA studies have been based on the chemical and packaging industries where the tool originated. Many are of the opinion that the full LCA methodology cannot be generalised across all manufacturing industry until suitable, readily available databases of standard information have been developed, impact assessment is more defined and the field becomes less academic 3. Currently, LCA can be regarded as generally expensive, time and labour intensive and requiring significant investment in measurement equipment for data acquisition. However, despite ongoing problems and continued development and debate, a number of traditional manufacturing companies are now attempting to apply LCA within their existing businesses and culture. Most are beginning work in this field by avoiding the complexities of a full LCA. Instead, they are attempting to complete 'restricted' studies, with clearly defined limits and boundaries. Thus, much work is being carried out at variety of levels; levels of completeness, commitment of resources and levels of detail. These companies persevere because they recognise that even a partial, well constructed LCA inventory, with the restricted current capability for impact and improvement analysis, can provide:
A number of examples of restricted studies have recently been published at LCA conferences some of these approaches are summarised below. Approaches To Restricted Data Collection The Chalmers Institute Chalmers have adopted an approach which combines two techniques, they call 'screening' and 'streamlining', to restrict the scope. In screening, concentration on initial data quality is low and data is acquired from generally available sources and used to identify environmental 'hotspots'. These hotspots are then subject to a fuller analysis. A streamlined LCA looks at fewer processes and transports or fewer impact categories. 5. Other companies have followed this lead and adopted various levels of restrictions. BNR Europe Ltd BNR has analysed one of their products, the telecommunications semiconductor laser. An initial analysis showed this to be a complex product with little materials corresponding to those in the LCA databases. Taking these problems into consideration they have initiated the first phase of their LCA work by restricting the study to:
Ford Motor Company In a similar way, Ford Motor Company has attempted an 'Energy Only LCA Comparison' between an electric energy vehicle and an internal combustion energy vehicle. This looks at the whole life of the car from raw material usage to final disposal. By comparing two similar means of transport, commonalities between the two systems can be eliminated from the analysis, which concentrates on life cycle energy usage as a function of the vehicle weight, material substitution and recycling 7. Alternative Approaches Some companies have suggested alternative ways of approaching LCA rather than just restricting the boundaries of the studies. Chrysler Chrysler 3 advocate an approach which they have called Life Cycle Management (LCM). This bears a number of similarities to LCA but, in comparison, this methodology is plant based, holistic (including recycling, cost, health and safety information) and utilises existing data rather than relying on intensive data collection. Yet another approach involves a conceptual life cycle approach; a thought process involving qualitative assessment to guide the selection of options for design and improvement. Fava points out that: "while the LCA methodology may have a few more years before it is widely and universally accepted methodology, the concept of life cycle thinking is here today and has applications to business and organisations as an alternative way of addressing environmental problems. It gives us a new paradigm to build future efforts to prevent pollution and sustain our resources for the future"8. AT&T Graedel et al 9, at AT&T, have expanded on the conceptual approach and proposes an assessment matrix, with a scoring system based on a supporting series of qualitative questions, to allow semi-quantitative analysis (see Fig. 2). They suggest one to two days to analyse a product and up to a week for a process. Fig. 2 (9) Lucas Industries plc Work by the author has adapted Graedel's approach and applied it at a Lucas Industries' manufacturing site, with preliminary results published 10. This work is progressing in conjunction with a 'gate to gate' analysis of selected Lucas products. Final Comments It should be emphasised that there is nothing wrong with these restricted approaches as long as their limitations are clearly stated and they are not represented as full studies. In fact, as Chalmers point out, 'a full LCA is (currently) beyond the budget and/or time constraints of many potential users' - they estimate an average 1.5 years duration and costs for some studies estimated at £300,000, with most resources committed during data collection and interpretation 4. At this early stage of LCA development, restricted studies provide business with realistic targets for initial entry into this complex field. If applied with care, they provide additional, useful information about the impacts of the current and future products, processes or services under study and enable the development of structured improvement programmes. In addition, they serve to demonstrate the usefulness of a life cycle approach and to prepare a company for the use of full LCA techniques as they become more fully defined and accessible. References 1: Vignon B W, Tolle D
A, Cornaby B W, Latham H C, Harrison C L, Boguski T L,
Hunt R G and Sellers J D, 1993, 'Life-Cycle Assessment: Inventory
Guidelines and Principles', United States Environmental
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Practices, Draft Copy', ISO Standard 14040. 3: Kainz R J, 1994, 'Life Cycle Management - An
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to Product Design', IEEE 0-7803-08299-8/93 9: Graedel T E,
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