Page 381 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

6.3 State of the Art of Methods 365

of Practice’, 47) the result of the SETAC workshop in Sesimbra 1993, has been
published with some additional elements. 48)
The suggested ‘environmental’ LCC method adheres to the form of LCA in
accordance with ISO 14040 and covers the entire life cycle of a product including use
and end-of-life phase. A monetarisation of possible external costs by environmental
damage in the future is not included. Thus double counting is meant to be avoided,
as the impact assessment of LCA accounts for (potential) environmental damage
in physical units (LCIA).
In LCC calculation there is no stand-alone impact assessment. The aggregated
result ideally corresponds to the actual costs, related to the selected functional unit,
in a common currency.
Similar to LCA, no information should be lost by aggregation, and the exact
analyses of the life cycle stages should be documented. Life cycle cost calculation,
similar to LCA, also differs from common cost calculations by the fact that all
included costs are assigned to the examined product and no ‘overhead’ exists. It is
also to be distinguished from the environmental cost accounting. 49)
LCC provides a meaningful supplement to LCA and to product-related social
assessments, because sustainable products should also be profitable (for the pro-
ducer) and affordable (for the user/consumer) to be accepted by the market.
The detailed LCC inventory indicates to persons responsible for the prod-
uct system along the value chain where an improved cost-efficiency can be
obtained.
The important actors in the life cycles are the consumers who not only decide
upon the acquisition of a product, but also upon its use and, in many cases, upon
disposal. In many cases an improved cost-efficiency is also an environmentally more
compatible one, particularly regarding energy-intensive products. Unfortunately
consumer decisions are often based exclusively on the price of purchase of a
product. Thus information, like the one supplied by LCC calculation, is able
to induce well-founded purchase decisions as, for example, the use phase is
also included. The price of a product, frequently used as ‘zeroth approximation’
(cradle-to-point of sale) for LCCs, is generally not suited. It includes of course
the costs ‘further up’ in the product tree including energy and raw material costs
in a highly aggregated form, and not the use-phase and only in rare exceptional
cases the costs of disposal (e.g. in Germany ‘the green point’ 50) for packaging).
In addition, no reference concerning cost aggregations and profit margins is
given.
LCC is even by itself a meaningful method to analyse a product, which can
later be supplemented by an LCA or product-related SLCA and in this way can
be promoted into a complete life-cycle based sustainability assessment (LCSA). 51)

47) SETAC (1993).
48) SETAC (2011) and Swarr et al. (2011).
49) Rikhardsson et al. (2005) and Schaltegger (2008).
50) German ‘Der Gr¨ une Punkt’ of Duales System Deutschland (DSD).
51) Kl¨ opffer (2008) and UNEP/SETAC (2011).