Page 175 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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agglomerations (SoE 2006). Given local variations, this is not an unfamiliar picture globally. At
the same time, demographic change could result in a slowing in population growth and
economic growth. This may reduce pressures on the environment, although this depends on a
wide range of other variables, including producer and consumer behaviours and practices.
A central difficulty in situating and gauging the effect of LCA in practice is that there are so
many dynamic variables to account for in parallel. These exist in addition to the difficulties
associated with data collection and impact assessment which have been considered in earlier
chapters (e.g. see Chapter 5). Even where LCA studies are completed and data is sufficient for
the purposes, as generally in the cases reported in waste management, the built environment
and water (see Chapters 6–8), these will inevitably require further study as technologies and
patterns of use change, along with energy sources.
Agricultural systems are particularly varied, as illustrated in Chapter 9. They are also in
dynamic flux due to changes both in the internal structures and practices of the industry, and
a wide range of external factors. The latter range from climate change to competing needs for
land and raw materials, to changes in the type and quantity of demand for different agricul-
tural products and services. In this sector especially, LCA must therefore adopt a whole-of-
system view which incorporates the many implications which large scale changes in agricultural
production can bring about, including scale effects, physical limits, economic ties and effect
and feedback loops in the economy.
In defence of LCA, it has not really been applied as a decision support tool in any consistent,
thoroughgoing way, and certainly not for very long. Where it has been applied and the results
enacted, it may be expected to have led to some reductions in rates of growth of environmental
impact. The problem is that, while a levelling off of rising impact may appear better than nothing,
it may amount to nothing in the long run, given the rate of predicted impacts associated with
climate change. In order for LCA to have a positive role in the transition towards sustainable
development, we must be able to differentiate ‘significant benefit’ from ‘negligible benefit’. Given
that western consumption and resultant impacts are widely acknowledged to be unsustainable,
our ‘baseline’ is unsustainable; how far below our current baseline lies sustainability?
So far then, we have accumulated two issues to resolve over the next decade. First, we must
undertake environmental assessment and decision-making under conditions of great uncer-
tainty and considerable change, taking account of a large number of variables. Second, we
must confront the question of ‘how much improvement is enough’ and establish suitable
orders of magnitude of expectation for environmentally preferable courses of action. Neither
issue is peculiar to LCA, of course, but the conduct of LCA must be cognisant of these issues.

12.2 Future trends in LCA uptake
To look at how LCA uptake is likely to develop given current trajectories, we can take a more
bottom-up, iterative approach. As indicated in Chapter 2, LCA has matured rapidly as a tech-
nique, leaving a tension between the competing needs for methodological standardisation and
flexibility. Two directions are therefore possible: more detailed and complicated methods;
and/or simplified and streamlined methods. We predict that both will happen, and in the fol-
lowing sections we contemplate how, across design and manufacturing, business management
and policy making.
12.2.1 Uptake in design
While the application of LCA has spread across a wide range of manufacturing industries,
products and services, there is clearly considerable scope for further uptake, especially in the
frequency of use and in the earlier (design) stages of product and service development. Since

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