Life Cycle Impact Assessment UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative recommended factors

A Life Cyscle Assessment (LCA) facilitates the systematic quantitative assessment of products, both goods and services, in terms of environmental, human health, and resource consumption considerations. The full life cycle of a product is taken into account– this includes the supply of raw materials, processing, transport, retail, use, as well as end-of-life waste management.

Life Cycle Impact assessment (LCIA) is the phase in which the set of results of the Inventory Analysis, mainly the inventory table with emissions and extractions, is further processed and interpreted in terms of environmental impacts and societal preferences. To this end, a list of impact categories (environmental problems) is defined, and models for relating environmental interventions to suitable category indicators for these impact categories are selected. The actual modeling results are calculated in the characterization step, and an optional normalization serves to indicate the share of the modeled results in a worldwide or regional total.

The Life Cycle Initiative’s flagship has published guidelines for Life Cycle Impact Assessment, “Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators Volume 1”. The publication identifies the “current best practice”, and recommended characterization factors in a variety of impact areas:

•climate change;

•health impacts of fine particulate matter;

•water use impacts; and

•land use impacts on biodiversity.

What makes this guidance so unique is the global consensus-building process, and its endorsement by an international partnership. Such robust and international backing should make these indicators especially attractive to be used in policy and reporting frameworks requiring recognition and stability.

Website:

http://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/applying-lca/lcia-cf/

Date (Creation): 2016-01-01

Date (Publication): 2016-01-01

Date (Revision)

Citation identifier: https://www.mica-project.eu/ / MICA_B3-118
MICA WP3 2018-11-03T15:16:00 Record extracted from Batch 3 spreadsheet

Other citation details: No other citation details provided

Purpose: Promoting global consensus on Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative			Resource provider

Maintenance and update frequency: Irregular

dataCentre

MICA
MET4TECH

MICA ontology (TemporalScheme)

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MICA ontology (DataScheme)

Other types of data or information / models

Keywords

Requirement for data generation: Other (please specify) or unknown

Keywords

Method of data or information generation: Model developed using other data or information classes

GEMET Concepts

Environmental impact assessment

GEMET Concepts

Environmental pollution

GEMET Concepts

Health

GEMET Concepts

Landscapes

MICA ontology (DomainScheme)

Impact categories