LCSA Flashcards
What is LCSA?
Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA)
•Addresses all three dimensions of sustainability (environment, society and economy) from a life cycle perspective
–> Allows comprehensive sustainability assessment of products and processes by combining different life cycle based methods
(LCA+ LCC + SLCA)
–> clarifies the trade offs between the three sustainable pillars, life cycle stages, impacts
- promotes awareness
- supports enterprises
- helps decision makes to choose sustainble products + technologies
- can support consumers
What is a major challenge of LCSA?
different maturity levels of LCA, LCC & SLCA
How to conduct the first two steps of LCSA?
- goal & scope definition
- -> important to find a common goal & scope for LCA, LCC,SLCA
- purpose & target audience
- select relevant impact categories
- system boundaries should contain all processes relevant for at least one of the techniques
- inventory
- -> collect input & output data
- -> LCC (costs & revenues)
- -> SLCA (working hours & nothing)
- -> LCA (water & CO2, N2O)
What is a major challenge in the goal & scope definition in LCSA?
consistent system boundaries
–> system boundaries of conventional lcc different boundaries are more narrow than SLCA
What is a major challenge in the inventory in LCSA?
applicability challenges:
- hard to find data for SLCA
- hard to relate to collected data in regard to fU
–> hard to have detailed information for example on working hours on the entire supply chain, maybe with site specific data you have it for one unit process but not for the entire supply chain
How is the impact assessment done in LCSA?
•LCA:
- classification,
- characterization
•SLCA:
- no defined method available
- mostly scoring of LCI results by using performance reference points (e.g. international agreements, country averages etc.)
•LCC:
–no defined method available
–Some proposals exist (e.g. EcLCA)
What are inventory indicators of LCA, LCC and SLCA?
LCA:
- emissions, waste
LCC:
- production costs, maintenance costs
SLCA:
- excessive hours of work, occupational accident rates
What are impact categories at midpoint level of LCA, LCC and SLCA?
LCA:
- global warming potential, water depletion
LCC:
- ends at inventory level, just sums ups costs
SLCA:
- subcategories: child labour, fair salary
What are impact categories at end point level of LCA, LCC and SLCA?
LCA:
- damage to ecosystem & human health
LCC:
- proposed categories: economic prosperity & resilience
SLCA:
- impact categories: human rights, working conditions
What are areas of protection of LCA, LCC and SLCA?
LCA:
- environment, human health
LCC:
- not yet defined, e.g. economic stability, wealth generation
SLCA:
- human dignity & well-being
What are further challenges when evaluating the general LCSA scheme?
- Interpretation of results
- Dealing with trade-offs
- The weighting of the different:
–-> Inventory indicators and impacts (and their relation)
–> impact categories/subcategories/costs within each of the three sustainability dimensions, i.e.between environmental indicators like global warming, acidification potential
–> weighting among the 3 sustainability dimensions to determine the sustainability score - difficult to sum up human health, working conditions, equality
- depends highly on the sustainability view we have
–> but allows weighting in a transparent way
What does the LCSA scheme look like?
1) inventory
2) classification & characterization
3) impacts, subcategories, costs
4) three-dimensional score (economic, social, environmental)
5) sustainability score
–> needs to be transparent, understandable & comprehensive
How is LCSA interpretation conducted?
Few methodologies are proposed…even fewer have been applied….
–Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard (LCSD)
–Life Cycle Sustainability Triangle
How can the major challenge in the inventory in LCSA be tackled?
Applicability challengess: Consistency & lack of data/databases, e.g. for SLCA
solution: develop more simplified approaches as a start (e.g. tier approach)
–> from low entry-level LCSA (focus on few impact categories) to comprehensive LCSA
How can the major challenge in the interpretation in LCSA be tackled?
Interpretation of LCSA results & dealing with trade-offs (within one dimension & between the 3 dimensions)
–> solution: develop a weighting system or monetization
