Page 356 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

340 5 Life Cycle Interpretation, Reporting and Critical Review

short version is important. Within the grey zone to marketing, the temptation of
whitewashing is eminently high!
The publication of a short version of the report in a scientific journal is always
recommended if new insights into the methodology or concerning the applicability
of the LCA under consideration to less investigated product systems have been
obtained. New inventory data are also of high interest, but they are often not
communicated for reasons of confidentiality. 30)

5.5
Critical Review

31)
A critical review, originally called a peer review , had already been proposed prior to
ISO standardisation by SETAC in the ‘Code of Practice’ (1993). By an ‘interactive’
accompanying review, two objectives should be achieved:
• Improvement in technical and scientific quality;
• Increase in reliability.
This requirement has been taken up by ISO, refined and alleviated as follows:
the review can now also be made a posteriori. 32) This modification accounts for the
fact that an LCA may originally be meant for internal use, at which the critical
review is optional, but later on, following revision if necessary, a publication may
be intended. In this case, a renewed review can be made interactively during the
update and improvement process (if such work is done); for the original study,
however, it occurred a posteriori.
In the current version of the ISO standard, 33) two types of critical review are
provided:
1. CR by internal and external experts (ISO 14044 6.2 and ISO 14040 7.3.2);
2. CR by a panel of interested parties (ISO 14044 6.3 and ISO 14040 7.3.3).
Variant 1 is suited for internal studies but not approved for studies with
comparative assertions to be made available to the public. In this case, a critical
review according to variant 2 has to be accomplished.
It is imperative in both cases that the reviewers are independent,which is not
self-evident for internal experts. In the frequent case of large companies performing
LCAs without external help, for example, expert colleagues of quality management,
of work safety, environmental departments or other areas of the enterprise not
involved in the LCA to be reviewed can be assigned as critical reviewer(s). The
internal critical reviewers have to meet the same requirements as external ones.

30) Frischknecht (2004).
31) SETAC (1993).
32) Kl¨ opffer (1997, 2000, 2005, 2012).
33) ISO 14040:1997 provides three types of critical review: by an internal expert, an external expert
and by ‘interested parties’ (panel method comprising two surveyors at least).