Life cycle assessment is a tool to
examine the impacts of products or procedures on environment.
The LCA technique contains these main
phases:
1.The definition and scope, which is
the first stage of a life cycle assessment, usually relates to the goals,
functional unit, boundaries and data collection.
2.The life cycle inventory (LCI) is a
stage where quantifies the inputs and outputs that should be considered in LCA
of a product. Inputs include energy (process, transport) and raw materials, and
outputs include environmental impacts (solid waste, atmospheric emissions).
3.The life cycle impact assessment
(LCIA), which interpret how the product impacts the environment (depletion of
resources and contamination) and human health (health hazards), finds out and
analyses the LCI data within the system. When performing LCIA, the following
should be considered: impact categories (global warming, ozone depletion, toxicity,
etc.), impact characterization (contributions of different impacts), normalization
(comparison to a reference situation) and valuation (weight of different
influences).
