Page 49 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

30 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

Some of these developments are already becoming mainstream LCA by
now, while other developments may disappear. Anyhow, the practice of LCA
is evolving, and it will continue to do so. The next part of this chapter will
discuss some of these developments in more detail.

2.2 A Short History of LCA

Above, we saw that there is not one LCA, despite the standards set by ISO. The
standardization process itself had to deal with a field that had already grown
into a highly diverse patchwork. The ISO-standards served well in merging
many ideas in a common framework and providing a terminology. The con-
sensus-based ISO process could propose a framework and terminology, but
it could not provide detailed guidelines, let alone data on unit processes and
characterization factors.
The freedom that the ISO standards offer is in some respects a curse, as it
leads to different "ISO-compliant" reports on the same topic with contradict-
ing results. But on the other hand, the fact that there is freedom has increased
its acceptance by practitioners and researchers. Meanwhile, these researchers
do not accept a fossilized LCA, but are developing and maturing LCA further.
This section discusses the historical development of LCA in terms of its
past, present, and future. The text is largely based on and adapted from [4]
(Guinee et al., Life Cycle Assessment: Past, Present, and Future, Environmental
Science & Technology 45,1,90-96. Copyright 2011 American Chemical Society).

2·2.1 Past LCA (1970-2000): Conception and Standardization
In this section we will briefly discuss and evaluate LCA as developed and
applied in the past, while distinguishing two periods: (1) 1970-1990 and
(2)1990-2000.

2.2.2.2 1970-1990: Decades of Conception

The first studies that are now recognized as (partial) LCAs date from the late
1960s and early 1970s, a period in which environmental issues like resource
and energy efficiency, pollution control and solid waste became issues of broad
public concern [5]. The scope of energy analyses [6,7,8], which had been con-
ducted for several years, was later broadened to encompass resource require-
ments, emission loadings and generated waste. One of the first (unfortunately
unpublished) studies quantifying the resource requirements, emission loadings
and waste flows of different beverage containers was conducted by Midwest
Research Institute (MRI) for the Coca Cola Company in 1969. A follow-up of this
study conducted by the same institute for the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency in 1974 [9] and a similar study conducted by Basier & Hofman [10] in
Switzerland, marked the beginning of the development of LCA as we know it
today. The MRI used the term Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis