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Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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but the process has shifted the risk burden and increased impacts overall. LCA is the appropri-
ate technique to minimise these risks, through its systematic, multi-impact approach, and it can
be expected to be invoked repeatedly to shed light on the ‘total’ impact of products and services
over the coming decade. For example, the rapid rise in interest in greenhouse gas emissions in
Australia since 2006 is a significant catalyst for increased LCA uptake, including to inform
‘carbon trading’ regimes and to indicate the wider environmental impacts of ‘carbon manage-
ment’ based initiatives.
The fifth point is that LCA can be extended beyond its ‘natural’ limits, and therefore
strengthened contextually, by integration and comparison with other assessment approaches.
For example, since LCA is systems and functional unit based, it does not lend itself easily to
issues of carrying capacity or scale. Hence, impacts are typically considered on a unit, rather
than a bulk or absolute, basis. Other tools which do focus on macro-economic or environmen-
tal stocks and flows can therefore be used together with LCA to provide uniquely illuminating
results. An example is the use of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organ-
isation (CSIRO) Australian Stocks and Flows Framework with LCA in a recent study on
building materials (DEWR 2007, see Chapter 7).
Similarly, LCA is typically used in situations which are place-independent. Where spatial
issues are significant, it can be applied with tools such as Environmental Impact Assessment,
to combine the rigour of systematic, function-based assessment with site-specific assessment
techniques.
Integrated assessment also holds out the possibility of more clearly juxtaposing alternative
sustainability perspectives and evaluations. For example, it has been suggested that there are
four distinctive approaches to environmental sustainability assessment:
1. Industrial ecology approaches with a mass orientation, as in MFA (Materials Flow Analysis)
and SFA (System Flow Analysis) (Brunner and Rechberger 2003).
2. Technology oriented life cycle approaches, exemplified in ISO-LCA (ISO 14040 series) and
EIOA (Environmental Input-Output Analysis) (Tukker et al. 2006; Huppes et al. 2006;
Leontief 1970).
3. Main stream economists taking into account market relations, exemplified in CBA (Cost
Benefit Analysis) and CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) modelling (Barbier et al.
1990; Eshet et al. 2006; E3ME 2008; GEM-E3 2008).
4. Ecological economists, refraining from general approaches, focusing on multi-criteria
analysis at a case level, and therefore lacking an acronym (Martinez-Alier et al. 1998)
(Huppes and Ishikawa 2007, p. 62)

While the authors do not suggest that integration would reconcile different results or values
that each approach embodies, they point to the value of acknowledging a taxonomy of sorts,
and support a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Working Group
initiative to clarify the relations between these overlapping approaches.
The sixth point extends the integration theme: LCA penetration can be improved through
the development of more accessible tools and languages relevant to relevant sectors, profes-
sions and practitioners. For example, there is scope for the development of functional and
integrated computer-aided design (CAD)-LCA tools for different sectoral applications, to
enable CAD users to more easily undertake and incorporate LCA information into their design
activities. Such initiatives are already underway (e.g. in Australia, the CRC for Construction
and Innovation Initiative LCA-Design). Also, as indicated in Chapter 11, LCA methods will
increasingly become part of assessment and design tools for specific applications. Examples
where this is already happening are in packaging design, solid waste management and building
assessment. Typically, the tools model the technical system under consideration such as the

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