Page 12 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

6 1. Introduction. Life cycle thinking

on LCA to promote the life cycle perspective at both theoretical and operational level (Wolf
et al., 2006). Influencing market dynamics, the European policy contributes to the spread of
life cycle tools around the world.
In the 21st century, methodological approaches of LCT improve: the international stan-
dards of LCA are revised (ISO, 2006b, 2006c), and life cycle perspective is gradually ap-
plied in several sectors and integrated with other decision support tools in almost all
the areas where environmental, economic, and social considerations are important. In
these years, new frameworks aiming to extend LCA methodology to economic and social
aspects of sustainability are elaborated (Guin ee, 2016), and the concept of life cycle is
adopted in several standards with different meanings and applications (Toniolo
et al., 2019b).
Over the last two decades, impact assessment methods have been continuously refined
and several methodologies updated; from 1999 to date, more than 20 methodologies of life
cycle impact assessment have been published worldwide by several organizations
(Rosenbaum, 2017). Through methodological consolidation, life cycle approach has a large
and rapid spread, increasing the range of products and systems analyzed by both industries
and governments. The interest in life cycle studies has increased, due to the growing public
awareness of environmental issues and a widespread acceptance of sustainable development
(Hou et al., 2015).
What happens next is actuality, which will be presented in the next chapters of this book.
What I want to emphasize here, for an overview, is the fact that, from the 2000s, the increase in
LCT initiatives around the world has gone hand in hand with increasing knowledge of en-
vironmental problems. On the one hand, greater environmental awareness pushes the scien-
tific community to improve methods for assessing environmental impacts, while on the other,
it leads the market to request more information on environmental impacts associated with
products. Thus, a virtuous circuit is established, in which local governments promote LCT
tools on the market, consumers are better informed and choose more consciously, companies
invest in life cycle evaluations to improve their products, also communicating results to the
market. To witness this virtuous circuit, we can see that, where the number of life cycle ini-
tiatives increases, available information concerning territorial environmental quality in-
creases as well, and indicators of the overall environmental condition show a progressive
improvement (Qian, 2016).
Fig. 1.2 summarizes the main evolutionary steps of the LCT along the timeline. In this
graph, from 1960 to date, a progressive increase characterizing the LCT story is highlighted
in four interdependent directions: life cycle practices, life cycle methods, life cycle publica-
tions, and life cycle policies. The first life cycle reasoning is done in the 1960s, when environ-
mental degradation and limited access to resources start becoming a concern. In the following
years, LCT takes shape and is gradually enriched through application, harmonization, and
dissemination. Life cycle practices also started in the 1960s, as isolated experiences, recording
a strong boost during the 1990s, due to the birth of standards and software to support the life
cycle analyses. Since the 1990s, government initiatives supporting the life cycle approach
have multiplied and scientific literature has exploded. Nowadays, the panorama of experi-
ences, methodologies, and publications concerning LCT is enormously rich and interdisci-
plinary, thanks to the complicity of international policies that recommend its use in all
economic sectors.