Background and Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment

This chapter spans the time from the early days of Life Cycle Assessment—LCA (the time of the so-called ‘proto-LCAs’ between about 1970 and 1990), until recent trends of simplified/streamlined LCAs, the footprint specifications (carbon footprint, water footprint) and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment—LCSA.

Important benchmarks along this span are the harmonisation of LCA by SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) and the standardisation of LCA by ISO (International Standardisation Organisation).

The basic discussions within SETAC occurred between 1990 and 1993.

The first attempt to develop a suitable LCA-structure was achieved during the SETAC workshop ‘A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments’ in August 1990, held in Smugglers Notch, Vermont, USA. The LCA-structure, the famous ‘SETAC triangle’, consisted of three components: Inventory—Impact Analysis—Improvement Analysis.

SETAC revised the framework during the Sesimbra workshop in 1993. It was the merit of SETAC to initiate a standardisation process which culminated in the ‘Guidelines for Life-Cycle Assessment: A Code of Practice’. The LCA-structure, again a triangle, now included four components: Goal Definition and Scoping—Inventory Analysis—Impact Assessment—Improvement Assessment.

This structure was only slightly modified by the ISO standardisation process: The fourth phase ‘Improvement Assessment’ (formerly ‘Improvement Analysis’) was replaced by ‘Interpretation’.

After the harmonisation of LCA by SETAC, the International Standardisation Process was soon initiated (Autumn 1993 in Paris), but it took seven years for the first series of LCA standards to be published (ISO 14040, ISO 14041, ISO 14042, ISO 14043).

The successful first series of ISO LCA standards superseded the SETAC ‘Code of Practice’, the Nordic guidelines and several national standards and became the uncontested model of an environmental life cycle standard. The series 14040 ff was revised once and condensed into two standards 14040 and 14044 (2006).

The four-phase structure was not altered

This chapter discusses the four phases of the LCA-structure by SETAC and ISO which are the subject of four volumes—Goal and Scope Definition in LCA; Life Cycle Inventory Analysis; Life Cycle Impact Assessment; Interpretation, Critical Review and Reporting. The remaining volumes follow a structure outside the ISO-framework: Applications of LCA, Special Types of LCA, Life Cycle Management, and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment.

Although there was a demand for environmental health data on chemicals, there was no global scientific organization able to talk about the science behind the regulations being developed. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) was founded in 1979. SETAC has three strengths: its global scale, its tripartite membership and governance, and its scientific base. Because SETAC was developed on an international scale, it has been able to address global environmental issues.

The SETAC North American LCA Advisory Group is a formally recognized group within SETAC that has been in existence since June 1991. Similarly, SETAC Europe established an LCA Steering Committee. Both the LCA Advisory and Steering Committee are referred to as the SETAC LCA Groups.

The LCA Groups report to the Board of Directors of both SETAC and SETAC Europe. Specific activities such as workshops, conferences, or educational material development, including ‘position papers’, are approved by the Board of Directors. During the 1990s these SETAC LCA Groups were instrumental in driving the scientific progress to codify the professional practice of LCA. During this time period, several major workshops were successfully organized and over a dozen key publications produced. The SETAC LCA Groups also broadly supported the initial preparation of the ISO 14040 series of voluntary international standards as well as their subsequent revisions.

The general mission of the SETAC LCA Groups is to proactively advance the science and application of LCAs to reduce the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with products, packaging, processes or activities.

Although life cycle assessment promised to be a valuable tool in evaluating the environmental consequences of a product, process, or activity, the concept was relatively new and required a framework for further development.

The workshop, ‘A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments’, held August 18–23, 1990, at Smugglers Notch, Vermont, was organized by SETAC to develop a framework and consensus on the current state of LCA and research needs for conducting life cycle assessments. Although life cycle assessments have been used, in one form or another, before the name was coined, this workshop report is the first document which presented the name of the method.

The four SETAC LCA workshops in Smugglers Notch (1990), Leiden (1991), Sandestin (1992) and Wintergreen (1992) formed a tiered process to culminate in the Code of Practice workshop of Sesimbra, Portugal, March 31–April 3, 1993.

Developing international consensus on harmonized methods has been a goal of the SETAC LCA workshops. The ‘Code of Practice’ completed the harmonization process. Shortly after the workshop, during the autumn of 1993, the ISO standardization process was initiated.

In 1994, as a result of the SETAC LCA workshops, the LCA Advisory Group of SETAC and the LCA Steering Committee of SETAC Europe established individual work groups to address specific LCA issues.

SETAC’s working groups and workshops have advanced both the application and reputation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by authoring LCA publications, supporting the development of LCA standardization, partnering with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and advancing the use of LCA in various sectors. As SETAC grows and expands on its own and with its supporters and partners, it will continue to advance the understanding and use of LCA while ensuring that science is kept at the forefront of LCA development.

The establishment of the international standards of Life Cycle Assessment—LCA (ISO 14040 series) led to worldwide acceptance of LCA. The ISO standards of LCA (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044) are the only globally relevant international standard documents on LCA which are broadly referenced by users and other standardization processes. Thus, they represent the constitution of LCA.

This chapter opens with an outline of the historical development of the international LCA standardization process and ends with an outlook on the future. The main part deals with the core standards and the spin-off standards of LCA. The core standards are ISO 14040—Environmental Management—Life Cycle Assessment—Principles and Framework and ISO 14044—Environmental Management—Life Cycle Assessment—Requirements and Guidelines.

Based on these classical LCA standards, ‘new’ approaches have recently been developed which have led to several spin-off-standards. They cover issues such as:

The activities of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative have been crucial for the dissemination of LCA worldwide and the creation of a global life cycle community, since 2002, after the ISO 14040 series had been established. The Life Cycle Initiative not only contributed to capability development and the set up of national and regional life cycle networks in different parts of the world but also to enhancing and building global consensus on life cycle methodologies in areas such as life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), social life cycle assessment as well as carbon and water footprinting. Moreover, the Life Cycle Initiative has successfully promoted the way leading companies are doing life cycle management (LCM) and the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development in life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA).

The chapter opens with an introduction on how the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative came to life and developed over the years. Then the special relationship of the Life Cycle Initiative to The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment is highlighted. This section is followed by a description of the main contributions of the Life Cycle Initiative to the international community. In the subsequent section the key messages based on the work conducted during the last 10 years are described. The chapter finishes with some thoughts on the future of life cycle thinking and an introduction to the Phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative.

The chapter includes the list of key achievements of the Life Cycle Initiative’s Phase 1 and 2 activities that are the creation of a global life cycle community, the LCI Registry, the LCIA Midpoint-damage Framework, the USEtox model, the LCM guide and capability maturity framework, the social LCA guidelines, the LCSA framework and the global guidance principles for LCA databases.

Six ‘milestones’ in the life of the journal (until 2013) are identified in this chapter and the accompanying literature is discussed:

These ‘milestones’ have significantly impacted the development of Int J Life Cycle Assess and, thereby, that of the field of LCA.

The sections of this chapter demonstrate that Int J Life Cycle Assess

This chapter discusses strengths and limitations of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) not by linear analysis but by elucidating limitations embedded in strengths. It elaborates perceived and real limitations in LCA methodology grouped by research need, inherent characteristic or modeling choice. So, LCA practice continues to suffer from variations in practice that can result in different LCA results. Some limitations, such as modeling missing impact indicators and making life cycle inventory more readily-available, will be addressed through continued research and development of the tool. Other modeling choice-related limitations, such as matching goal to approach setting a proper functional unit or appropriately scoping the assessment, need to be addressed through continued education and training to assist users in the proper application of the tool. Still other limitations in LCA practice would benefit by the development of harmonized guidance and global agreement by LCA practitioners and modelers.

However, despite these variations, LCA offers a strong environmental tool in the way toward sustainability.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of current gaps of and challenges for LCA structured into inventory, impact assessment, generic and evolving aspects. A total of 34 gaps and challenges were identified. These include challenges like ‘allocation’, ‘uncertainty’ or ‘biodiversity’, as well as issues like ‘littering’, ‘animal well-being’ or ‘positive impacts’ which are not covered as often in the existing LCA literature. Each of these gaps is described by a high-level overview of the topic and its relevance to LCA, and the state of the art in terms of literature and potential solutions, if any, is presented.

The motivation for such an overview is two-fold: First, robust, sustainable and credible use of LCA should avoid the over-interpretation of LCA results without proper consideration of its gaps and limitations. Second, these gaps and challenges represent research needs for the scientific LCA community and hopefully inspire further progress in method development.