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The Beginning and the End? • 157

100

Normalized Percentage 60 Energy Consumption
80

Air Pollution
Water Pollution
40
Solid Waste
Water Consumption
20
0
Production Distribution Use Disposal
Life Cycle

Figure 9.4
Environmental impact. From Kadamus, C., Eco-Design or Greenwashing (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge Consulting, 2009). With permission.

It will be obvious to our readers that a washing machine uses energy and
water. There is also, however, solid waste (packaging, end-of-life disposal,
and of course the ubiquitous disappearing sock). Most of the environ-
mental impact is during its use (see Figure 9.4). Most of the solid-waste
impact comes from the two stages of delivery—first, when the packaging
is removed and disposed of, and second, the eventual end-of-life disposal
of the machine. The solid-waste levels are indeed significantly higher than
other contributors at these stages, but notice that they total less than 15%
of the solid waste produced by the washing machine. If this surprises you, a
detailed LCA would reveal the packaging for laundry detergents and other
consumables that are discarded as the machine is used. This illustrates
how careful we must be to consider every aspect of use, and to draw the
“system boundary” broadly enough to cover this aspect of the washing
machine’s use.

lCa Fundamentals

Let’s restate the definition of an LCA, this time taking input from ISO 14040:

LCA is a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential
impacts associated with a product by:
• compiling an inventory of relevant inputs and outputs of a prod-
uct system;
• evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with
those inputs and outputs;