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The Beginning and the End? • 171

reference document and should be provided to them to help prevent any
misrepresentation of the results.
The reference document should consist of the following elements:

1. Administrative information
a. Name and address of LCA practitioner (person who conducted
the LCA study)
b. Date of report
c. Other contact information or release information
2. Definition of goal and scope
3. Life cycle inventory analysis (data collection and calculation
procedures)
4. Life cycle impact assessment (methodology and results of the impact
assessment that was performed)
5. Life cycle interpretation
a. Results
b. Assumptions and limitations
c. Data quality assessment
6. Critical review (internal and external)
a. Name and affiliation of reviewers
b. Critical review reports
c. Responses to recommendations

Note the “critical review.” This is an important part of the report. It accom-
modates the multiple views of peers within and outside the organization
to help ensure impartiality and completeness of the analysis.

lCa soFtWare tools

A number of commercial software programs and consultants are avail-
able to help with conducting an LCA. The two LCA tools most often used
are SimaPro and GaBi (see Chapter 14). Almost all of these sources pro-
vide life cycle inventory and, with a little practice in using the software,
they can make conducting an LCA a fairly straightforward process. The
trade-off is that how the data were modeled is not transparent, so the user
must trust the modeler. This also makes system comparisons problematic
if different data sources are used since it is not easy to determine what