The Computational Structure of Life Cycle Assessment
Life Cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for environmental decision-support in relation to products from the cradle to the grave. Until now, more emphasis has been put on the inclusion quantitative models and databases and on the design of guidebooks for app
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ECO-EFFICIENCY IN INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE VOLUME 11 Series Editor: Arnold Tukker, TNO-STB, Delft, The Netherlands Editorial Advisory Board: Martin Charter, Centre for Sustainable Design, The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham, United Kingdom John Ehrenfeld, International Society for Industrial Ecology, New Haven, U.S.A. Gjalt Huppes, Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Reid Lifset, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; New Haven, U.S.A. Theo de Bruijn, Center for Clean Technology and Environmental Policy (CSTM), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
The Computational Structure of Life Cycle Assessment by
Reinout Heijungs Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
and
Sangwon Suh Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-6041-9 ISBN 978-94-015-9900-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9900-9
Printed an acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2002 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trausmitted in any form or by auy meaus, electronic, mechauical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of auy material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered aud executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Preface This books presents a complete overview of the computational aspects of life cycle assessment (LCA). Many books and articles have been written on LCA, including theoretical treatments of the entire concept, practical guidebooks to apply the technique, and concrete case studies in which LCA is applied to support decision-making with respect to environmental aspects of product alternatives. However, a good discussion of the computational structure of LCA is lacking. Knowledge is only partially documented, and what is documented is fragmented over diverse publications with mutual inconsistencies in approach, terminology and notation. The book is the result of several years of research, along with the teaching of LCA at university classes and, not unimportantly, the development of software for LCA. This software has been designed to support the education of LCA, but it has been applied in real-world case studies as well. The name of the software is CMLCA, which is an abbreviation of Chain Management by Life Cycle Assessment. This program can easily be used to reanalyse and further explore the ideas that are outlined in this book. Another important source for this book relates to the work involved in connecting input-output analysis (lOA) to LCA. Software for th