Life cycle assessments Flashcards
what is a life cycle assessment(LCA)?
assess the environmental impact of the entire lifetime of a product.
what are the stages of a product’s life that needs to be considered to conduct an LCA?
- Getting the raw materials
- Manufacturing and packaging
- Using the product
- Product disposal
At each stage of a product’s lifetime what needs to be considered?
certain factors,including the amount of energy that is needed,how much water and other resources are used,the amount of pollution produced,how much waste is formed and how this waste is disposed of
what can extracting raw materials needed for a product damage?
the local environment,e.g mining metals
what can extraction result to?
pollution due to the amount of energy needed.
what can the transportation of raw materials to where they are used in manufacturing result in?
greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.
what do raw materials often need to be processed to do ?
extract the desired materials and this often needs large amounts of energy.There are often large amounts of waste associated with these processes which needs to be disposed of.
what can the chemical reactions used to make compounds from their packaging from their raw materials cause?
can produce waste products
what can be done to reduce the amount of waste that ends up polluting the environment?
some waste can be turned into other useful chemicals
energy is used to transport waste to landfill,what does this cause?
pollutants to be released into the atmosphere.The waste kept in landfill takes up space and can pollute land and water.
If a material is biodegradable,what does this mean?
the space taken up by landfill may only be temporary
what does it mean if a material is non-biodegradable?
may take up to a thousand years to degrade,such as many plastics.
what is another way to dispose a product?
incineration-when waste is burnt at very high temperatures.This cuts down on waste going to landfill and can be used to generate electricity but can cause air pollution.
what are the problems with LCA?
- The effect of some pollutants is harder to give a numerical value to.
- LCA is not a fully objective method as it takes into account the values of the person carrying out the assessment,which means LCA can be biased.
what is the problem with selective LCAs?
only show some of the impacts of a product on the environment.These can be biased as they are written to support the claims of the company-support the claims for advertising purposes
