Making LCA More Efficient

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has gained attention because it enables quantitative evaluation of the burden a product places on the environment. However, acceptance of LCA has proceeded slowly because a large amount of work is required to gather the environmental burden data used in the evaluation. To shorten this work time, we utilize readily-accessible databases both internal and external to the company and have established “Effective LCA” procedures for calculating the environmental burden data for LCA. * Corporate Global Environment Department. ** Nobuyuki Sato, System Solutions Company, Terminal Systems Div. Past methods for evaluating the environmental impact of products and their problems Throughout their life cycle, which extends over the long period from the production stage to the stage when they are disposed of as waste, products have an impact on the environment. To provide products which have a small impact on the environment, the burden they place on the environment throughout their life cycle—their characteristics in regard to energy savings, resource savings, recyclability, hazardous material content, etc.— must be evaluated at the design stage, and improved as much as possible. For this reason, our company and other manufacturers of electric and electronic products have introduced “product assessment” as a method of evaluating issues of “environmental burden” at the product design stage. With this tool, product models currently being designed can be compared to models of the past in regard to specified evaluation criteria (such as “quantity reductions,” energy savings, recyclability, etc.) and enable an evaluation of the degree of improvement in environmental burden. However, because this evaluation method, for each evaluation criterion, is based on comparisons between products, it has the following problems: 1. It is not possible to analyze at which stage of a product’s life cycle its environmental burden is largest, and that makes it difficult to come up with effective countermeasures. 2. Evaluation data is shown as relative values, so it is not possible to make comparisons to products not included in the data (such as the products of other makers). As a method of solving the disadvantages of this kind of product assessment, LCA is receiving considerable attention. Because LCA is a quantitative method for evaluating environmental burden (for example CO2 discharge quantities) and because it considers a product’s full life cycle, the problems mentioned above in regard to the “product assessment” system are solved. Problems with LCA LCA is implemented according to the flow shown in Figure 1. After determining the subjects to be surveyed, “data gathering” is done. However, at this step of the process, the environmental burden data required by LCA is gathered, from both inside and outside the company, and is organized in a structure which enables LCA. At the “LCA implementation” step, inventory analysis and impact evaluation are performed, based on the data which has been gathered. In the “inventory analysis” step, environmental burden data generated during the product life cycle—that is, input data (the cost of energy applied and resources consumed) and output data (the discharge quantity of materials which put a burden on the environment)—are calculated across the entire product life cycle. In addition, in the “impact evaluation” step, the results obtained under inventory analysis are classified into categories such as “global warming,” “ozone layer destruction,” etc., and the degree of environmental impact in each category is evaluated. The LCA approach started in the 1960’s and its foundation was solidified in 1997 with publication of ISO14040, the international standard for LCA. Nevertheless, the fact is that its acceptance afterwards has been slow. That is Determine subjects to be surveyed.