SDG Detail

F&ES 838 Environmental Product Life-Cycle Assessment

Postgraduate course

Project description

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is an analytical method that aims to quantify potential environmental impacts along the entire life cycle of a product, from extraction or harvest of natural, mineral, or fossil resources through production, distribution, and consumption, to final end-of-life disposal or reuse/recycling. LCA provides a quantitative evaluation of a wide range of environmental issues to avoid unintended consequences such as shifting the burden between different life stages or different environmental concerns. Its primary applications include decision support in the context of design-for-environment programs and policy making as well as providing a science-based basis for environmental claims used for marketing products in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) settings. The course is split into a lecture and a software lab. The lecture conveys the general principles and relevant definitions of the LCA methodology as defined in the ISO 14040 series of standards and exemplifies them through reference to real-world examples covering different industry sectors and product categories. The overall goal of the lecture is to provide the knowledge necessary to scope, manage, and scrutinize LCA studies in the business, consulting, or government sectors. In addition to the lecture, students receive training on the professional-grade GaBi software for life-cycle assessment to provide them with the necessary practical skills and life-cycle inventory data to complete their class projects, which will be an LCA study of their own choosing. The goal of the software training is to provide the basic practical skills necessary to conduct life-cycle inventory modeling and to convey a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges associated with LCA in practice.