Page 39 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

3 LCA History 21

The modelling of increasingly complex product systems and the proliferation of
LCI data and impact assessment methodologies created a need for dedicated LCA
software and the first versions of both SimaPro and GaBi, two widely used soft-
ware, were released around 1990 (Thinkstep 2016;PRé 2016).
In the twenty-first century, impact assessment methods have continuously been
refined and several methodologies have emerged and are frequently being updated.
The first impact assessment methods took into account the often large differences in
the environmental hazards of the individual emissions. The realisation that there can
be very large differences also in the sensitivity of the environment receiving the
impacts lead to the release of the EDIP2003 method (Hauschild and Potting 2005)
with spatially differentiated impact assessment methods covering non-global
impacts like eutrophication and acidification. With the globalisation of produc-
tion and an increased focus on biobased products in LCA, methods for impact
assessment of extraction-related impacts like water use and land use have seen a lot
of activity in the 2000s and 2010s. Hybrid LCA has emerged to reap the benefits of
process-based and input/output based inventory analysis. Acknowledging that
sustainability also has a social dimension, a growing activity has attempted to
develop methods for Social LCA to quantify social impacts of product life cycles. A
framework for life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) has emerged for per-
forming assessments and aims to take into account an environmental, social and
economic dimension of sustainability (see Chap. 5).

3.3 Application

Many of the early process-based LCA studies analysed packaging, which was a
great consumer concern around the 1970s. For example, moulded pulp trays were
compared to plastic trays and plastic bottles were compared to refillable glass
bottles. Studies were typically commissioned by companies producing or using the
packaging, such as Coca Cola in a pioneering study in 1969. Rather than disclosing
studies directly to consumers, the results were mainly used for internal purposes,
such as guiding reduction of life cycle impacts.
LCA also caught the interest of government early on. For example, the US EPA
commissioned a large peer reviewed study, which was published in 1974, with the
aim of informing regulation on packaging (US EPA 1974). However, at that time
the EPA decided that using LCA as a direct regulatory tool was impractical,
because it was thought to require LCAs to be carried out on thousands of products
followed by extensive micro-managing of private businesses.
During the 1980s, life-cycle-related tools received little attention in North
America, but in Europe, a revival started around the middle of the decade with an
increased interest in the impacts of milk packaging that inspired a number of large
LCA studies performed in different European countries. All studies compared
alternative packaging systems for milk distribution to private consumers
(Bundesamt für Umweltschutz 1984; Franke 1984; Lundholm and Sundström 1985;