Page 229 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

11.2 Life cycle environmental indicators 227
footprint assessment, and some typical indicators that can be employed for evaluating the life
cycle-based environmental performance of industrial systems are introduced.

11.2.1 Introduction of the environmental-life cycle assessment

Environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), also known as life cycle assessment (LCA), is
an approach that covers a wide range of environmental concerns regarding a product
throughout its entire lifetime, from raw material acquisition to the disposal of the product
at the end. According to the literature (De Menna et al., 2018; UNEP/SETAC, 2009; Verma
and Kumar, 2015), there are four stages involved in the E-LCA:
1. Determination of purpose and scope: this stage describes the functional units, system
boundaries, data distribution process, and data quality requirements of an investigated
system.
2. Inventory analysis: this stage establishes a list of inputs and outputs regarding the energy
and material data, where the demand data for calculating the assessment indicators can be
collected.
3. Impact assessment: this stage converts the collected demand data into specific impact types
and indicator parameters, for facilitating the understanding of the environmental impact of
the system from the life cycle perspective.
4. Interpretation of the results: this stage offers further interpretations by testing the
completeness, sensitivity, and consistency. The final conclusions, suggestions, and
limitations of the system can be given in this stage.

11.2.2 Environmental indicators from E-LCA
With an increasing interest in sustainability, E-LCA has become a very popular tool for
representing the environmental concerns of the industrial systems from the life cycle perspec-
tive. Naturally, the indicators within the E-LCA have been frequently employed for sustain-
ability prioritization. In the life cycle sustainability assessment, E-LCA is considered as a
systematic tool that evaluates the environmental impacts occurring throughout the entire life
cycle of an industrial product, process, or activity. In E-LCA, various indicators can be used
for the environmental assessment, which are usually the manifestation of some environmen-
tal problems (Hermann et al., 2007). Among the popular E-LCA tools, methods like CML2001,
EDIP97, and Eco-indicator 99 can be used for developing the environmental indicators
(Dreyer et al., 2003). Generally, there would be eleven indicators that are suitable to be used
for evaluating the environmental performance of the industrial systems, which can be clas-
sified into three main categories including resources, ecosystems, and human health (Van
Hoof et al., 2013). As can be observed in Fig. 11.2, the indicators of depletion of abiotic re-
sources, depletion of biotic resources, and land use represent the concerns of the resources;
land use, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, acidification, and climate change stand for the concerns
of the ecosystems; while the indicators of climate change, photo-oxidant formation, strato-
spheric ozone depletion, human toxicity, and carcinogenic substances belong to the category
of human health. Notably, the indicators of land use and climate change can be used for
representing different concerns according to the actual conditions of the investigated system.