5
Life Cycle Assessment of Chemical
Products and Processes
5.1
The Importance of Considering All Impacts
To responsibly innovate and design high-quality chemical products and processes,
the economic, environmental, and societal impacts they cause need to be carefully
considered. While investment calculations have been around for decades to help
with the economic analysis of a project, environmental and societal impacts,
however, have classically been ignored as external costs and not considered in
the design of chemical products and processes. As introduced in Chap. 2, external
costs are those incurred and imposed onto a third party by a producer of a good
or service. In the context of protecting human health and the environment, these
can include costs resulting from, for example, public waters being polluted by a
factory’s emissions.
The importance of considering these impacts has been increasingly recognized
through the development and application of a method called life cycle assessment
(LCA) for health and environmental impacts and social life cycle assessment
(SLCA) for social impacts. The scope of traditional investment calculations is also
now being extended in order to consider costs along the entire life cycle of a product,
and this is implemented through a method known as life cycle costing (LCC).
The three of these methods together make up the conceptual framework for an
entire life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA): LCSA = LCA + SLCA + LCC
(Swarr et al., 2011a). So far, LCA is the only one of these three methods that
has been internationally standardized through the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and 14044 (ISO, 2006b) standards.
This chapter focuses on introducing the basic framework specifically surrounding
LCA for understanding the health and environmental impacts of chemical products
and processes. Its role in implementing the first guiding principle of eco-efficiency
is presented, and a brief introduction is also provided for key elements of LCC and
SLCA.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
K. Hungerbühler et al., Chemical Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62422-4_5
67
Life Cycle Assessment of Chemical
Products and Processes
5.1
The Importance of Considering All Impacts
To responsibly innovate and design high-quality chemical products and processes,
the economic, environmental, and societal impacts they cause need to be carefully
considered. While investment calculations have been around for decades to help
with the economic analysis of a project, environmental and societal impacts,
however, have classically been ignored as external costs and not considered in
the design of chemical products and processes. As introduced in Chap. 2, external
costs are those incurred and imposed onto a third party by a producer of a good
or service. In the context of protecting human health and the environment, these
can include costs resulting from, for example, public waters being polluted by a
factory’s emissions.
The importance of considering these impacts has been increasingly recognized
through the development and application of a method called life cycle assessment
(LCA) for health and environmental impacts and social life cycle assessment
(SLCA) for social impacts. The scope of traditional investment calculations is also
now being extended in order to consider costs along the entire life cycle of a product,
and this is implemented through a method known as life cycle costing (LCC).
The three of these methods together make up the conceptual framework for an
entire life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA): LCSA = LCA + SLCA + LCC
(Swarr et al., 2011a). So far, LCA is the only one of these three methods that
has been internationally standardized through the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and 14044 (ISO, 2006b) standards.
This chapter focuses on introducing the basic framework specifically surrounding
LCA for understanding the health and environmental impacts of chemical products
and processes. Its role in implementing the first guiding principle of eco-efficiency
is presented, and a brief introduction is also provided for key elements of LCC and
SLCA.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
K. Hungerbühler et al., Chemical Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62422-4_5
67