Page 180 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Prospects for life cycle assessment development and practice in the quest for sustainable consumption

product, building or technology configuration so that the material requirements and opera- 167
tional energy can be predicted and interpreted by the LCA. There is more potential to develop
LCA in this way in the following sectors:
s water services planning
s product design specialties
s purchasing tools.

The seventh point is related to the issue of easing accessibility to LCA information, but
extends to include the development of capacity to use this information. There is a need to
provide significant additional capacity for academic, professional and in-service training,
including through embedded modules within planning, design, and built environment disci-
plines, and well beyond, across social sciences and engineering. Engineering is the only disci-
pline to currently incorporate notable curricula elements which could be included under the
term LCA in any significant way, and there is an urgent need for other disciplinary contexts for
LCA to be explored.
The need for increased capacity also extends beyond ‘training’, since there is a need not just
for a new profession of LCA ‘experts’ but also (and perhaps more fundamentally) a need for
LCA capacity to be embedded across disciplines, organisations and policymaking. Despite
growing awareness and access to available information about the impacts of climate change,
our current processes of learning have not always translated into action. Programs of wider
education and awareness raising to develop active engagement, knowledge and ownership of
LCA as a valuable tool in assisting society along a more sustainable path will assist in this if
they can be participatory and based in practice.
Social learning (e.g. Wals 2007) highlights the transformative nature of participation and
‘ownership’ in learning and outcomes effectiveness. While observation and ‘traditional’
training and information helps establish and maintain norms for accepted and expected deci-
sions, actions and behaviour (Myers 2007), this gathers more potency when more participative
learning environments are created, such as the ‘use of group gatherings and processes such as
workshops and meetings where ideas, knowledge, experiences, skills and practices may be
exchanged’ (Voronoff 2005).
There are clear implications here for the ways we may envisage the methods and propaga-
tion of LCA capacity development. Glasser (2007) differentiates between passive and active
social learning. Passive learning does not rely on interaction. It includes newspapers, books,
lectures, the Internet and direct observation and while it can provide useful new insights it
‘generally has limited applicability for directly spawning substantively new social innova-
tions’ (Glasser 2007, p. 50). Active social learning, however, involves ‘conscious interaction
and communication between at least two living beings’ and is ‘inherently dialogical’ (Glasser
2007, p. 51). He contends that most learning in our society is passive, and can and does
continue to perpetuate ‘maladaptive’ processes; for example, the maintenance of practices
and institutions that are harmful to the environment. He further differentiates between hier-
archical, non-hierarchical and co-learning, the latter being based on collaboration, trust, full
participation, and shared exploration, and holding out the most potential for transformative,
lasting action.
Finally, there is a need to recognise the limits of LCA and to probe these limits through
research, while at the same time ensuring that practice remains within them. LCA is typified
by the comparison of two or more systems in order to ‘pick the best’, and the initial problem is:
what if neither are any use? While LCA practitioners are getting more adept at identifying
from a range of alternatives which has a potentially lower impact (notwithstanding the data
and methodological challenges discussed through previous chapters), the application of LCA

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