C10: Life Cycle Assessments

Question 1

What is an LCA?

Answer 1

Looks at every stage of a product’s life to assess the impact it would have on the environment.

Question 2

What’s the first step of a product’s life cycle?

Answer 2

Getting the raw materials:
Extraction can damage local environment and result in pollution due to the energy needed
Processing them requires large amounts of energy

Question 3

What’s the second step in a product’s life cycle?

Answer 3

Manufacture and packing:
Uses lots of energy resources and can cause pollution
Disposal of waste products

Question 4

What’s the third step in a product’s life cycle?

Answer 4

Using the product:
Use can damage the environment - eg. burning fuels releases gases and harmful substances, fertilise leach into streams damaging ecosystems
How long it’s used for - if it requires much energy to make but is used for ages means less waste in the long run

Question 5

What if the fourth step in a product’s life cycle?

Answer 5

Product disposal:
Landfill sites - take up space, polluted land and water
Energy used to transport to landfill - pollution
Incinerated - air pollution

Question 6

What’s the life cycle assessment for a plastic bag?

Answer 6

1: crude oil
2: extraction through fractional distillation, cracking then polymerisation (waste reduced as other fractions have uses)
3: can be reused for shopping and other things eg. bin liner
4: recyclable, not biodegradable, will take up space in landfill and pollute land

Question 7

What’s the life cycle assessment for a paper bag?

Answer 7

1: timber
2: processed using lots of energy - lots of waste made
3: usually only used once
4: biodegradable l, Jon-toxic and can be recycled

Question 8

What’s the comparison of the life cycles of the two types of bags?

Answer 8

Even though plastic bags aren’t biodegradable, they take less energy to make and have a longer lifespan than paper bags, so may be l as harmful to the environment

Question 9

What are the problems with life cycle assessments?

Answer 9

Effect of pollutants is hard quantify - difficult to be given a numerical value
So producing an LCA is not an objective method as it takes into account the views of the persons carrying out the assessment - can be biased 
Selective LCAs (only show some of the impacts) can also be biased - written deliberately to support the claims of a company