Lca what is

This process includes the study of the transport of materials, their packaging and the disposal of said packaging, as well as the embodied energy required to construct them. This is compared against international standards using LCA databases, tools, and models, to attempt to fully understand the smallest implications that production and construction has on the environment. By using an LCA, contractors can know how they can better prevent environmental problems related to project management and improper waste disposal, home builders using LCA can explain how a green building material yields energy savings throughout its lifetime, and building owners can see how sustainable products reduce environmental impacts for the lifetime of their investment.

Want to learn more about optimising the thermal comfort of your project? Read below to learn the basics regarding the Life Cycle Assessments or LCAs, are reports created with the sole purpose of analysing how building materials are sourced and disposed of.

It also assesses every other process in between. By obtaining and understanding the information provided within an LCA, you can begin to understand the impact of your project and take steps to minimise it whilst also maximising the financial aspects of your project.

When is a Life Cycle Assessment required? What are the requirements of a Life Cycle Assessment? Written by Laura Golsteijn. Table of contents What is a life cycle assessment LCA? Four steps of life cycle assessment Step 1. Inventory analysis of extractions and emissions Step 3. This resulted in common understanding and team focus on the shared goals. Laura Golsteijn Senior Consultant I am eager to increase the environmental awareness of our society, and I believe that everyone can contribute to a more sustainable world, every day.

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But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Environmental Impact Assessment is an analysis that is often conducted in the public sector, to look at the potential impact of a new construction project.

Other models include cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-cradle, gate-to-gate, well-to-wheel, and Economic input-output life cycle assessment.

Now that we have understood the differences between LCA variants, we can dive deeper into the actual phases of an LCA. Also, the interpretation of the LCA does not always depend on the actual assessment being completely finished. Especially when a Life Cycle Assessment becomes more complex, continuously interpreting the results helps optimize the analysis as it goes further down the process. In the first phase of our Life Cycle Assessment, we define what exactly we want to analyze — and how deep we want to go with our analysis.

This defines our product life cycle, as well as the implications we will be analyzing. Also, we have to decide which Impact Categories we want to focus our assessment on. We might, for example, want to generate an Environmental Product Declaration for one of our products. If that is the goal, we have to build our assessment around the methods required by the political bodies, for example the ministry of construction.

However, a certain depth might not be interesting for our analysis. We might, for example, decide, that we will not analyze the details of pre-forms of our raw materials in-depth. Also, the social implications of the unit we are assessing might not be completely relevant. This is an extremely important step because an analysis can — in theory — never be fully finished.

If we analyze a certain raw material, will we also examine the implications it has on the family of the worker who harvested it? Although a T-Shirt by itself is a relatively simple product, you still need to take a number of things into account to create a proper Life Cycle Assessment.

It is essentially the data collection phase of our LCA. The goal is to quantify the environmental inputs and outputs — this means we measure everything that flows in and out of the system we defined in phase 1. Now, this analysis can be extremely complex — because production processes and the supply chain can be extremely complex constructs. Life Cycle Assessments today are conducted by professionals who are extensively trained in the norms and standards that define how an LCA should look like.

We will look deeper into these standards later in this guide. A lot of the data for the LCA is already available — for example in your electricity or water bills. This is why, at this stage, the data gets collected through data collection sheets. These sheets gather quantitative data on a company level, process level, and product level.

If qualitative data is needed, questionnaires might be used. The data sheets get filled out by the stakeholders in the company who have access to the data.

One method for that would be the Economic input-output life cycle assessment we described earlier, which can give us data to fill some blanks. Other times, the averages could be aggregated data gathered by branch organizations, financial institutes, NGOs or market research organizations. The data within the model needs to be collected for all activities within the scope of our Life Cycle Assessment. A T-Shirt consists of fabric that is sewed together for the end product. The fabric itself also goes through different treatment processes.

This is how the above flow model looks like in Mobius you can access the full model for free by signing up for Mobius, our LCA software. Click to expand the picture! And when we look at it in a structural tree diagram, this is how the life cycle inventory of a T-Shirt looks like. We collect the data and model it into input-output flows. Until now, we have defined what we want to measure and collect in phase 1.

Then we collected and structured the data in phase 2. In phase 3, we are evaluating how significant the impacts are. This is based on our Life Cycle Inventory flows from phase 2.

Impact Categories are what you want to measure your impact in. Now, we have to define these impact categories more precisely. There is an abundance of impact categories to choose from. Depending on the goal and scope of your analysis, different categories might apply. By assigning an equivalent, we can compare all these inputs to each other — much like if you want to compare different currencies to each other.

First, we have to choose from the impact categories that are relevant to our overall assessment. There are four linked components of LCA: Goal definition and scoping : identifying the LCA's purpose and the expected products of the study, and determining the boundaries what is and is not included in the study and assumptions based upon the goal definition; Life-cycle inventory : quantifying the energy and raw material inputs and environmental releases associated with each stage of production; Impact analysis: assessing the impacts on human health and the environment associated with energy and raw material inputs and environmental releases quantified by the inventory; Improvement analysis: evaluating opportunities to reduce energy, material inputs, or environmental impacts at each stage of the product life-cycle.

Demmers and H. Defining Life cycle Assessment Life cycle assessment determines the environmental impacts of products, processes or services, through production, usage, and disposal.