Page 183 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
170
exposure and recognition of the value of LCA, while the problems arise from opposition to the
results – often from stakeholders who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Within a sea of variables and rapid shifts – in everything from climate to culture – LCA has
established a systematic, rigorous and revealing approach that often sheds new light on the
environmental implications of our endeavours. This is achieved through a range of assump-
tions and truncations which, while enabling the technique, may also devalue it if these are not
explicit. In the preceding sections, the authors have indicated likely developments and uptake
in LCA, and developed eight themes which, taken together, are designed to minimise the risk
of mistakes, and maximise the benefits of the application of the technique. These can be sum-
marised as:
1. proceed boldly but with care
2. practice will improve effectiveness
3. continual improvement is necessary
4. bring breadth to ‘single’ issues
5. use in conjunction with other techniques
6. improve ease of access
7. build capacity and embed practice
8. recognise limitations and engage with other disciplines.

In general, these themes need no further explanation since they have been developed
already; however, the last two themes are possibly the most pressing and complex, and warrant
further emphasis.
The use of social learning approaches could be expected to assist in extending the capacity
for and use of ‘life cycle thinking’ both institutionally and among the wider public and social
realms. This is bound up with the propagation of LCA terminology, information and findings
in popular culture and a range of public settings. The emerging social norms of ‘good environ-
mental citizenship’ and their interplay with the transition from novel applications of LCA to
‘mainstream’ common usage may be expected to grow over the next decade, so that, by 2020, it
will be as common to overhear conversations in pubs over environmental impacts associated
with a trip to the ‘footy’ as about the associated cash costs and logistics.
An opportunity also exists to expand the settings in which LCA is applied to help bridge
the gap between the technical disciplines and the policy and social realms. This is particularly
stark in the realm of sustainable consumption. While LCA is inherently limited in the wider
realm of sustainable consumption concerns, it also benefits from them, since these have led
governments to examine material and energy flows; in other words, to use LCA as a technique
to shed light on the environmental impacts of household consumption (e.g. see Hertwich
2005). Increasingly, development of traditional environmental indictors is accompanied by
socioeconomic and social indicators in LCA (e.g. there is a United Nations Environment Pro-
gramme (UNEP)/SETAC working group on social indicators). As the boundaries of LCA
continue to expand, the potency of this technique will be maximised through the growing
community of LCA practitioners pursuing open, reflective and increasingly integrated schol-
arship and practice.

12.6 References
Barbier E, Markandya A and Pearce DW (1990) Environmental sustainability and CBA.
Environment and Planning A 22, 1259–1266.
Brunner PH and Rechberger H (2003) Practical Handbook of Material Flow Analysis. Taylor
and Francis/CRC, London.

100804•Life Cycle Assessment 5pp.indd 170 17/02/09 12:46:25 PM