376
V. Arnold
Once on the important event with the topic of “Sustainable development” with the
participation of professors, representatives of firms and the head of a state someone
threw an idea in Twitter and it was immediately supported by several participants. The
idea was to turn off the air conditioning system in the room to save the environment.
And at the end, it was off. Was this the right decision in conditions of high surrounded
temperature (around 32 °C) and when the hall was filled with more than 500 people?
When someone makes such a decision, it is necessary to keep in mind the likelihood
that some of the visitors may feel sick. In this case, it is questionable, will the
environmental effect of turning off the air conditioner be higher than emergency
medical care for the injured?
At first sight, these are eco-friendly solutions, and people who make them sometimes stoically suffer from the hardships associated with them but being confident of
their contribution to the environment preservation. Are these measures really useful
if considering their consequences in general/complex way? What happens by looking
closer?
2 LCA: Creation History
Santorio (1561–1636) one of the first has begun with balance and metabolism. In
his work “Die Statica medica” he described the experiment of balancing in human
body. Briefly, he put himself on the scales and constantly measured his weight. He
found out that the body lost more substances than it entered minus left. He called the
reason for this “emanatio invisibilis”—(Latin) invisible radiation (Müller 1998).
Later, in the 1800s, people began to talk about ecology as an independent science.
The research of the ecobalance technique dates back to the mid-twentieth century.
In parallel with Harold Smith’s work, in 1969/70 Coca-Cola developed “Resource
and Environmental Analysis” (REPA). This method became the forerunner of the
resource and energy balance developed by the Midwest Research Institute Kansas
City for Coca-Cola. This analysis focused primarily on In-and Outputs of resources
and energy during package and beverages production (Bieletzke 1999).
Further development of the ecobalance took place mostly in Europe. In particular, it was the publication of the study assessment of the life cycle of packaging
materials in 1977 by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), which
created a terminology of the “Life Cycle Assessments” (LCA). In other publications,
a quantitative environmental impact assessment was determined, which was assessed
by certain factors and was first presented as one indicator (Schebeck 2005). At the
same time, similar changes took place in Germany. German Öko-Institut (Institute
for Applied Ecology) has developed a concept “Product Line Analysis” (PLA) to
provide an information about environmental impact assessments. The Netherlands
and Sweden also published similar concepts during this period (Bieletzke 1999).
V. Arnold
Once on the important event with the topic of “Sustainable development” with the
participation of professors, representatives of firms and the head of a state someone
threw an idea in Twitter and it was immediately supported by several participants. The
idea was to turn off the air conditioning system in the room to save the environment.
And at the end, it was off. Was this the right decision in conditions of high surrounded
temperature (around 32 °C) and when the hall was filled with more than 500 people?
When someone makes such a decision, it is necessary to keep in mind the likelihood
that some of the visitors may feel sick. In this case, it is questionable, will the
environmental effect of turning off the air conditioner be higher than emergency
medical care for the injured?
At first sight, these are eco-friendly solutions, and people who make them sometimes stoically suffer from the hardships associated with them but being confident of
their contribution to the environment preservation. Are these measures really useful
if considering their consequences in general/complex way? What happens by looking
closer?
2 LCA: Creation History
Santorio (1561–1636) one of the first has begun with balance and metabolism. In
his work “Die Statica medica” he described the experiment of balancing in human
body. Briefly, he put himself on the scales and constantly measured his weight. He
found out that the body lost more substances than it entered minus left. He called the
reason for this “emanatio invisibilis”—(Latin) invisible radiation (Müller 1998).
Later, in the 1800s, people began to talk about ecology as an independent science.
The research of the ecobalance technique dates back to the mid-twentieth century.
In parallel with Harold Smith’s work, in 1969/70 Coca-Cola developed “Resource
and Environmental Analysis” (REPA). This method became the forerunner of the
resource and energy balance developed by the Midwest Research Institute Kansas
City for Coca-Cola. This analysis focused primarily on In-and Outputs of resources
and energy during package and beverages production (Bieletzke 1999).
Further development of the ecobalance took place mostly in Europe. In particular, it was the publication of the study assessment of the life cycle of packaging
materials in 1977 by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), which
created a terminology of the “Life Cycle Assessments” (LCA). In other publications,
a quantitative environmental impact assessment was determined, which was assessed
by certain factors and was first presented as one indicator (Schebeck 2005). At the
same time, similar changes took place in Germany. German Öko-Institut (Institute
for Applied Ecology) has developed a concept “Product Line Analysis” (PLA) to
provide an information about environmental impact assessments. The Netherlands
and Sweden also published similar concepts during this period (Bieletzke 1999).