Page 35 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Chapter 3
LCA History

Anders Bjørn, Mikołaj Owsianiak, Christine Molin
and Michael Z. Hauschild

Abstract The idea of LCA was conceived in the 1960s when environmental
degradation and in particular the limited access to resources started becoming a
concern. This chapter gives a brief summary of the history of LCA since then with a
focus on the fields of methodological development, application, international har-
monisation and standardisation, and dissemination. LCA had its early roots in
packaging studies and focused mainly on energy use and a few emissions, spurring
a largely un-coordinated method development in the US and Northern Europe.
Studies were primarily done for companies, who used them internally and made
little communication to stakeholders. After a silent period in the 1970s, the 1980s
and 1990s saw an increase in methodological development and international col-
laboration and coordination in the scientific community and method development
increasingly took place in universities. With the consolidation of the methodolog-
ical basis, application of LCA widened to encompass a rapidly increasing range of
products and systems with studies commissioned or performed by both industry and
governments, and results were increasingly communicated through academic
papers and industry and government reports. To this day, methodological devel-
opment has continued, and increasing attention has been given to international
scientific consensus building on central parts of the LCA methodology, and stan-
dardisation of LCA and related approaches.

Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, the reader should be able to:
• Explain how LCA emerged and what characterised the early years of
development.

A. Bjørn (&) M. Owsianiak C. Molin M.Z. Hauschild
Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management
Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
e-mail: anders.bjoern@polymtl.ca
A. Bjørn C. Molin M.Z. Hauschild
CIRAIG, Polytechnique Montréal, 3333 Chemin Queen-Mary, Montréal, QC, Canada
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 17
M.Z. Hauschild et al. (eds.), Life Cycle Assessment,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56475-3_3