Selection of industry specific burdens for life cycle inventories

This paper focuses on two principal areas of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-specific burdens in the electronics industry and burden selection criteria. The current list of environmental burdens generally used in the inventory phase of LCA does not cover many potential burdens and may bias the impact assessment stage. Most of the burdens used to date have been selected arbitrarily on data availability. This is a potential weakness in LCA methodology and new selection criteria are suggested for use in determining industry selective burdens to improve the accuracy and value of LCA’s.