The formulation of life cycle impact assessment framework for Malaysia using Eco-indicator

Background, aim, and scope  

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an emerging supporting tool designed to help practitioner in systematically assessing the environmental performance of selected product’s life cycle. A product’s life cycle includes the extraction of raw materials, production, and usage, and ends with waste treatment or disposal. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) as a part of LCA is a method used to derive the environmental burdens from selected product’s stages. LCIA is structured in classification, characterization, normalization and weighting. Presently most of the LCIA practices use European database to establish the characterization, normalization and weighting value. However, using these values for local LCA practice might not be able to reflect the actual Malaysian’s environmental scenario. The aim of this study is to create a Malaysian version of normalization and weighting value using the pollution database within Malaysia.     

End-of-life modelling of buildings to support more informed decisions towards achieving circular economy targets

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally accepted method to assess the environmental impacts of buildings. A major methodological...     

Life cycle assessment as a decision support tool for bridge procurement: environmental impact comparison among five bridge designs

Purpose

The conventional decision-making for bridges is mostly focusing on technical, economical, and safety perspectives. Nowadays, the society devotes an ever-increased effort to the construction sector regarding their environmental performance. However, considering the complexity of the environmental problems and the diverse character of bridges, the related research for bridge as a whole system is very rare. Most existing studies were only conducted for a single indicator, part of the structure components, or a specific life stage.

Methods

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized method for quantifying the environmental impact of a product, asset, or service throughout its whole life cycle. However, in the construction sector, LCA is usually applied in the procurement of buildings, but not bridges as yet. This paper presents a comprehensive LCA framework for road bridges, complied with LCA ReCiPe (H) methodology. The framework enables identification of the key structural components and life cycle stages of bridges, followed by aggregation of the environmental impacts into monetary values. The utility of the framework is illustrated by a practical case study comparing five designs for the Karlsnäs Bridge in Sweden, which is currently under construction.

Results and discussion

This paper comprehensively analyzed 20 types of environmental indicators among five proposed bridge designs, which remedies the absence of full spectrum of environmental indicators in the current state of the art. The results show that the monetary weighting system and uncertainties in key variables such as the steel recycling rate and cement content may highly affect the LCA outcome. The materials, structural elements, and overall designs also have varying influences in different impact categories. The result can be largely affected by the system boundaries, surrounding environment, input uncertainties, considered impact indicators, and the weighting systems applied; thus, no general conclusions can be drawn without specifying such issues.

Conclusions

Robustly evaluating and ranking the environmental impact of various bridge designs is far from straightforward. This paper is an important attempt to evaluate various designs from full dimensions. The results show that the indicators and weighting systems must be clearly specified to be applicable in a transparent procurement. This paper provides vital knowledge guiding the decision maker to select the most LCA-feasible proposal and mitigate the environmental burden in the early stage.     

Comparative LCA of industrial objects

Goal, Scope and Background  This paper is the second part of the publication which is devoted to comparative LCA analysis of the industrial pumps. The previous paper deals with the methodological aspects concerning quality assessment and forms an independent work. This paper uses practically only the methodological suggestions made there. The main aim of the presented study is to make a comparison between the industrial pumps which are based on two different technologies. The Life Cycle Assessment method is used to check whether the differences of the manufacturing processes influence the level of the potential environmental impact during the whole life cycle of the analysed products. Methods  The Life Cycle Assessment is carried out using the Ecoindicator99 method. Additionally, an extensive quality analysis of the LCA study is made (Part I). To make the process of an identification of the data easier and faster, they are assigned to a special data documentation form. To ensure the credibility of the LCA results different methods of interpretation are used. Results and Discussion  The LCA analysis shows clear superiority of the pumps manufactured using modern technology. It seems that this superiority results not only from the differences in the emissions, but also from different characteristics of effectiveness in the usage stage. Thanks to the uncertainty analysis, each LCA result is provided with the range of uncertainty. Conclusions  The LCA results are supported by different techniques of interpretation: the sensitivity-, the contribution-, the comparative-, the discernability- and the uncertainty analysis. There is strong evidence of the superiority of the pumps based on the modern technology. Recommendations and Outlook  The main source of the environmental impact in the case of pumps is the usage stage and the consumption of energy. That is why it should be the main area to improve. The LCA results show that actions taken in the usage stage and energy consumption can lead to a considerable reduction of the environmental impacts.     

Irradiating the environment: Radiological impacts in life cycle assessment

One of the main shortcomings of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) when applied to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, is that there is currently no recognised procedure to deal with radionuclide emissions in the Impact Assessment stage. A framework which considers both human and environmental impacts is required and a methodology which is compatible with the other impact assessment approaches in LCA must be developed. It is important that the discussion is not only restricted to concepts, but that a working methodology is developed which can be readily applied by LCA practitioners. A provisional method is available for assessing radiological impacts on human health, but no consideration has been given to potential effects on the environment. A methodology is proposed in this paper which assesses irradiation of the environment using Environmental Increments (EI) as the quality standard. This approach is based on the same principles as for the Ecotoxicity classification group, and it represents a working methodology which can be continuously improved as knowledge in the area increases.     

Environmental life cycle implications of upscaling lithium-ion battery production

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) literature evaluating environmental burdens from lithium-ion battery (LIB) production facilities lacks an...     

Distribution of environmental performance in life cycle assessments—implications for environmental benchmarking

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a robust method to analyse the environmental impacts of products and is used in public and private...     

Accounting for biodiversity in life cycle impact assessments of forestry and agricultural systems—the BioImpact metric

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful method for assessing environmental impacts at large scales. Biodiversity and ecosystem diversity are...     

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.     

Environmental impact assessment of biomass process chains at early design stages using decision trees

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is generally considered as a suitable methodology for the evaluation of environmental impacts of processes. However,...     

Inclusion of prevention scenarios in LCA of construction waste management

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied extensively for the environmental evaluation of solid waste management. However, there are only a...     

LCA in Japan: policy and progress

A summary of the current Japanese activities related to Life Cycle Assessment are presented with a specific comparison of Life Cycle Impact Assessment in relation to European tendencies. Japanese organizations involved in LCA, recent legislation impacting LCA activities and LCA case studies are also tabulated. The LCA priorities of policy makers and industrialists are discussed in comparison and compared to those in the United States. Projects within the Life Cycle Assessment Society of Japan and the Man-Earth Project are highlighted including the construction of a public LCI data base and the prediction of 21st century environmental crises.     

Selection of building thermal insulation materials using robust optimization

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used to analyze the environmental profile of a material and product. For example, the selection of...     

An approach to achieve overall farm feed efficiency in pig production: environmental evaluation through individual life cycle assessment

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Use a holistic individual life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate possible mitigation of environmental impacts through optimisation of...     

How to overcome barriers limiting LCA adoption? The role of a collaborative and multi-stakeholder approach

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Companies meet hindrances and difficulties in adopting life cycle assessment (LCA) as a way to identify and assess the environmental aspects of...     

Toxicity impacts in the environmental footprint method: calculation principles

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The EU environmental footprint (EF) is a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based method which aims at assessing the environmental impacts of...     

Use of data envelopment analysis to benchmark environmental product declarations—a suggested framework

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Environmental product declarations (EPDs) are standardized tools based on life cycle assessment (LCA) to communicate and compare environmental...     

Life cycle assessment of Portland cement production in Myanmar

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Cement manufacturing is associated with global and local environmental issues. Many studies have employed life cycle assessment (LCA) to...     

Environmental assessment of masonry mortars made with natural and recycled aggregates

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - This study used the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology (ISO 14040, ISO 14044) to quantify and compare the environmental impacts associated...     

Estimation of shadow prices of soil organic carbon depletion and freshwater depletion for use in LCA

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The interpretation of differences between alternative systems in life cycle assessment (LCA) can be problematic when different impact categories...