Page 26 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

10 1 Introduction

States 45) and in Japan 46) was presented in special issues of the International Journal
of Life Cycle Assessment.
The special contributions from the Centre of Environment of University Leiden
(Centrum voor Milieukunde Leiden, CML) under the leadership of Professor Helias
Udo de Haes were appreciated in a study on sociology of scientific knowledge by
Gabathuler 47) and in a supplementary issue of the International Journal of Life Cycle
Assessment. 48) The greatest achievement of CML was, without any doubt, a stronger
focus on the ecological aspects of LCA, compared to the earlier more technical
ones. Nevertheless, a prior Swiss LCA had already featured a simple method
of impact assessment. 49) In practice, the CML method tended to overemphasise
chemical releases in the impact assessment. At the same time – due to the absence
of generally adhered indicators – it underestimated the impacts of the overuse of
natural resources such as minerals, fossils, biota and land 50) (see Chapter 4).

1.3
The Structure of LCA

1.3.1
Structure According to SETAC

A first attempt to structure LCA was by the SETAC triangle of 1990/1991 already
quoted (Figure 1.2)
Inventory in the context of LCA (LCI) means material and energy analysis of the
examined system from cradle to grave. The resulting inventory table contains a list
of all material and energy inputs and outputs (see Figure 1.3 and Chapter 3).
These numbers of LCI need an ecological analysis or weighting. Inputs and
outputs are sorted according to their impact on the environment. Thus, for
instance, all releases into the air causing acid rain are aggregated (see Chapter 4).
This procedure was formerly called Impact Analysis by SETAC, and later Impact
Assessment.
The interpretation of the data procured in LCA has already been postulated in
Smugglers Notch. It was called Improvement Analysis, later renamed Improvement
Assessment. The introduction of this component was regarded as great progress
because the interpretation of the data was conducted according to specific rules.
The Environmental Agency Berlin (UBA) 51) has included this task in 1992 in its
recommendation to the conduct of LCAs as an option. The rules for interpretation
were later modified during the standardisation process of ISO (see Section 1.3.2).
To date this phase is named interpretation 52) (see Figure 1.4).

45) Curran (1999).
46) Special issue Japan: Finkbeiner and Matsuno (2000).
47) Gabathuler (1998).
48) Huijbregts et al. (2006).
49) BUS (1984).
50) Kl¨ opffer and Renner (2003).
51) German: Umwelbundesamt (UBA).
52) ISO (1997).