Page 23 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

1.2 History 7

the 1880s a procedure that can be considered as precursor for Life Cycle Inventory
(LCI). 17) His interest focused on energy supply, especially on coal.
The first LCAs in the modern sense were conducted around 1970, termed
Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis (REPA) at Midwest Research Institute
in the United States. 18) As with nearly all early LCAs or ‘proto-LCAs’, 19) these were
an analysis of resource consumption and emissions caused by product systems, the
so-called inventories without impact assessment. To date, such studies are called
Life Cycle Inventory studies. 20) The new methodology was first applied to compare
21)
beverage packaging. The same applies for the first LCA conducted in Germany in
1972 under the leadership of B. Oberbacher at Battelle-Institute in Frankfurt, Main.
The new method – originally proposed by Franklin and Hunt, USA – additionally
captured costs (among others, those of disposal procedures). Interestingly, light
polyethylene pouches, already in use at that time, obtained best results, similar to
the results in more recent studies. 22)
Further, early LCAs were conducted by Ian Boustead in the United Kingdom 23)
and Gustav Sundstr¨ om in Sweden. 24) In addition, Swiss studies, 25) which can be
considered as proto-LCAs, date back to the 1970s. They were conducted at the
EMPA in St. Gallen; see memories of Paul Fink, former director of the EMPA. 26)

1.2.2
Environmental Policy Background

Why did the development of LCA start in the early 1970s? At least two reasons can
be determined:
1. Rising waste problems (therefore, studies on packaging)
2. Bottlenecks in energy supply and acknowledgement of limited resources.
While the former issue (i) was implemented into a just-emerging environmental
policy by the authorities in most developed countries, public awareness of the
latter (ii) was raised by the bestseller The Limits to Growth (the report to the Club
of Rome). 27) Something must have been in the air because the book caused a
sensation in 1972, the year of its publication. Did a change of paradigm occur? Was
the throw-away mentality of post-war generation suddenly under scrutiny?
The theory in the ‘Club of Rome’ study was confirmed by reality through the
first oil crisis in 1973/1974. Although the study was over-pessimistic with regard to
the exhaustion of oil resources, it demonstrated the vulnerability of an industrial

17) Quoted by Suter and Walder (1995).
18) Hunt and Franklin (1996).
19) Kl¨ opffer (1994, 1997, 2006).
20) ISO (1997).
21) Oberbacher, Nikodem and Kl¨ opffer (1996).
22) Schmitz, Oels and Tiedemann (1995).
23) Boustead (1996) and Boustead and Hancock (1979).
24) Lundholm and Sundstr¨ om (1985, 1986).
25) BUS (1984).
26) Fink (1997).
27) Meadows et al. (1972, 1973).