Life Cycle Assessment

Lecture Notes

We study life-cycle assessment because it helps us make environmental decisions. It's used by policy makers, businesses, and individual citizens. It's used for comparing, on an environmental basis, the various types of similar products, processes or services, production methods, and product and process choices. It evaluates multiple stages of the life of the product including the preproduction stage, the production stage, the distribution and packaging stage, the utilization stage, and the disposal stage. Water, air, and soil conditions are evaluated from the time the raw materials are grown, mined, or produced through the disposal of the product. We may look at the consumption of natural resources, at pollution that may occur as a result of this product being produced and used and then disposed, and we would also look at the overall affects on the ecosystem in which it's produced and used. So it's a very comprehensive way of looking at a product. In this slide we see two life-cycle assessments, one of a t-shirt and another of a motorbike. These are simple examples and presented to give you an idea of what goes into a life-cycle assessment.