LCA (Life Cycle Assessment)
Introduction
Life Cycle Assessment is a method used to evaluate the environmental impact of product,
process or services over its entire life cycle. This assessment help to provide a clear
understanding of how various stages such as extraction of material, production, transportation,
Usages, recycling and final disposal.
1. STAGES OF LCA
Cradle-to-Grave
It a comprehensive approach in LCA that evaluates the environmental impacts of a
product throughout its entire life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials (the cradle) to its
disposal as waste (the grave). This assessment includes multiple stages such as manufacturing,
transportation, use, reuse, recycling, and final disposal. By analyzing all these phases, "cradle-
to-grave" provides a complete picture of the environmental footprint of a product, allowing for
informed decision-making regarding sustainability and environmental policies.
Cradle-to-Gate
Cradle-to-gate is a more limited scope compared to cradle-to-grave. It assesses the
environmental impacts of a product from the point of raw material extraction up until it leaves
the manufacturing facility (the gate). This approach is useful for understanding the impacts
associated with the production phase, excluding the impacts related to the transportation, usage,
and disposal of the product. Cradle-to-gate assessments are often used when analyzing the
supply chain and production processes, focusing on minimizing the environmental effects
during manufacturing.
Gate-to-Gate
Gate-to-Gate focuses specifically on the processes that occur between the entry and exit
points of a manufacturing facility. This means that it only evaluates the environmental impacts
related to the operations within the manufacturing facility itself, without considering the
upstream activities (like raw material extraction) or downstream activities (like product usage
and disposal). Gate-to-gate assessments are particularly beneficial for identifying inefficiencies
in the manufacturing process and targeting improvements in that specific stage of the product
life cycle.
LCA is data- intensive. It may be difficult to collect data due to much quantity. Some
data measurement difficult to measure and they are very sensitivity data and particularly is the
data is not own by only one company.
Dur to this high-volume data we used specialized software this help us in faster
calculation and standardization. In these studies, LCA are performed according to the
framework defined ISO (ISO 14040- 14044). These are some standards that helps us while
doing LCA.
2. LCA PHASES
According to ISO standard governing the LCA (ISO 14040- 14044), it is made of 4 stages.
1. Goal and Scope
2. Inventory Analysis
3. Impact Assessment and
4. Interpretation
1. Goal and Scope
This is the phase 1 and ISO 14040 and the most important choices are described.
In this we define the Goal about the application and intended audience; reason for
carrying out this study. In Scope we discuss about the functional unit. Functional units
depend on the goal of the study. It is a measure of the function of the system being
Studied. It provides the reference to which input and output can be related. It also
enabled the comparison of 2 essential different system. System boundaries which
process to include types of environmental impacts being considered, decided if the
study should include a review, whether to use site specific data or average data for
multiple production sites etc. The scope of study may be defined from cradle to gate,
cradle to grave or cradle to cradle.
2. Inventory Analysis
Detailed information about materials, water and energy consumed as well as
emission and waste generated in each step of the life cycle is collected. The ground data
is compiled into LCI dataset, collection of all masses and energy flow from all the
process involved with the help of LCA software.
2.1. Types of Data
1. Foreground Data
2. Background Data
1. Foreground Data: Direct Measurement or field data
Surveys Question
Manufacture and Supplier Data
On-site Assessment
Lab Analysis
2. Background Data: Pre- existing data
Literature Review
Government Report
Industries Associations
Online Report
Sustainable Reporting
The Software used for the database are: Simapro, one click LCA, Sphere, Open LCA.
3. Impact Assessment:
These methods available in the software. Some environmental impact assessment
methods even weigh the various environmental categories against each other in order to
calculate aggregated results in different impact area. e.g. human health, even single core
results combining all different environmental impacts.
The Environmental Impact Categories are:
o Acidification Potential (AP)
o Ecotoxicity Potential (ETP)
o Eutrophication Potential (EP) (Nutrification)
o Global Warming Potential (GWP) (Climate Change)
o Human Toxicity Cancer Potential (HTCP) (Human Health Cancer)
o Human Toxicity Non-Cancer Potential (HTNCP) (Human Health Non-Cancer)
o Human Health Criteria Air Potential (HHCAP) (Human Health Particulates)
o Stratospheric Ozone Depletion Potential (OPD) (Ozone Layer Depletion)
o Smog Creation Potential (SCP) (Photochemical Ozone Creation)
4. Interpretation:
In this the results of the impact assessment are discussed and analysed.
The major source of environmental impact along with the life cycle are identified and
recommendation for improving the environmental performance of the product are given
and the assumption and the data quality are discussed.
