68
5 Life Cycle Assessment of Chemical Products and Processes
5.2
Introducing Life Cycle Assessment
While economic accounting and valuation of a product or a process can usually
be based on pricing in existing markets, accounting for health and environmental
impacts raises fundamental questions about which natural resources to protect and
how to prioritize them. Since every man-made system within the technosphere is
fundamentally in conflict with the natural systems of the ecosphere (also referred to
as the biosphere), it is important to find measurements that enable an evaluation of
the impacts and damages that can occur. With a wide range of very different types
of potential damages, there also needs to be a way to compare damages with one
another.
Life cycle assessment aims to help systematically overcome these challenges.
It does this by identifying, quantifying, and interpreting the impacts caused by
resource consumption and emissions as completely as possible while remaining
objective, transparent, and practical.
LCA is an appropriate method to support:
• Grassroots design: prioritization of research and development (R&D) projects
for new products or processes
• Retrofit design: prioritization of R&D projects for existing products or processes
• Investment projects and supply chain management: selecting among available
technologies, investigating steps within a supply chain, considering the location
of suppliers, etc.
• Policy and marketing strategies: taking into account retailers and customers,
providing information to consumers, supporting legislative decisions, etc.
LCA is limited in the support it can provide for:
• Consideration of risks and impacts from the use of a chemical product. These can
only be relatively assessed by LCA but can be more specifically characterized
through product risk assessment (see Chap. 6).
• Consideration of accident-related impacts. This is better addressed through
process risk assessment (see Chap. 7).
While the basic approach and steps of completing an LCA have largely remained
the same since its first standardization in the 1990s, various methods for calculating
impacts have continued to develop. Much-needed data describing the resource
use and interactions that a product or process has with the environment have
significantly expanded (Hellweg and Milà i Canals, 2014).
An LCA is subdivided into four main phases following the ISO standard 14040
(ISO, 2006a). These include (1) goal and scope definition, (2) inventory analysis,
(3) impact assessment, and (4) interpretation (see Fig. 5.1). Each of these phases
is introduced and discussed in more detail in this chapter. For further, in-depth
5 Life Cycle Assessment of Chemical Products and Processes
5.2
Introducing Life Cycle Assessment
While economic accounting and valuation of a product or a process can usually
be based on pricing in existing markets, accounting for health and environmental
impacts raises fundamental questions about which natural resources to protect and
how to prioritize them. Since every man-made system within the technosphere is
fundamentally in conflict with the natural systems of the ecosphere (also referred to
as the biosphere), it is important to find measurements that enable an evaluation of
the impacts and damages that can occur. With a wide range of very different types
of potential damages, there also needs to be a way to compare damages with one
another.
Life cycle assessment aims to help systematically overcome these challenges.
It does this by identifying, quantifying, and interpreting the impacts caused by
resource consumption and emissions as completely as possible while remaining
objective, transparent, and practical.
LCA is an appropriate method to support:
• Grassroots design: prioritization of research and development (R&D) projects
for new products or processes
• Retrofit design: prioritization of R&D projects for existing products or processes
• Investment projects and supply chain management: selecting among available
technologies, investigating steps within a supply chain, considering the location
of suppliers, etc.
• Policy and marketing strategies: taking into account retailers and customers,
providing information to consumers, supporting legislative decisions, etc.
LCA is limited in the support it can provide for:
• Consideration of risks and impacts from the use of a chemical product. These can
only be relatively assessed by LCA but can be more specifically characterized
through product risk assessment (see Chap. 6).
• Consideration of accident-related impacts. This is better addressed through
process risk assessment (see Chap. 7).
While the basic approach and steps of completing an LCA have largely remained
the same since its first standardization in the 1990s, various methods for calculating
impacts have continued to develop. Much-needed data describing the resource
use and interactions that a product or process has with the environment have
significantly expanded (Hellweg and Milà i Canals, 2014).
An LCA is subdivided into four main phases following the ISO standard 14040
(ISO, 2006a). These include (1) goal and scope definition, (2) inventory analysis,
(3) impact assessment, and (4) interpretation (see Fig. 5.1). Each of these phases
is introduced and discussed in more detail in this chapter. For further, in-depth