Environment International, 30, 721-739, 2004

Life Cycle Assessment Part 2: Current Impact Assessment Practice
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D. W. Pennington, J. Potting, G. Finnveden, E. Lindeijer, O. Jolliet, T. Rydberg, G. Rebitzer

Abstract
Providing our society with goods and services contributes to a wide range of environmental impacts. Waste generation, emissions, and the consumption of resources occur at many stages in a product life cycle from raw material extractction, energy acquisition, production and manufacturing, use, reuse, recycling, through to ultimate disposal.

These all contribute to impacts such as climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, photooxidant formation (smog), eutrophication, acidification, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, the depletion of resources, and noise among others. The need exists to address these product-related contributions more holistically and in an integrated manner, providing complimentary insights to those of regulatory/process-orientated methodologies. A previous article (Part 1) outlined how to define and model a product life cycle in current practice., as well as the methods and tools that are available for compiling the associated waste, emissions, and resource consumption data into a life cycle inventory. This article highlights how practitioners and researchers from many domains have come together to provide indicators for the different impacts attributable to products in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase of LCA.






 

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Last update: 28/May/2004
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