Environmental Life Cycle Management

This book provides insight into the Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept and the progress in its implementation. LCM is a management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of business and its value chains. In this regard, LCM is an opportunity to differentiate through sustainability performance on the market place, working with all departments of a company such as research and development, procurement and marketing, and to enhance the collaboration with stakeholders along a company’s value chain. LCM is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements by minimizing environmental and socio-economic burden, while maximizing economic and social value.

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment is a pivotal guide to identifying environmental problems and reducing related impacts for companies and organizations in need of life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA, a unique sustainability tool, provides a framework that addresses a growing demand for practical technological solutions. Detailing each phase of the LCA methodology, this textbook covers the historical development of LCA, presents the general principles and characteristics of LCA, and outlines the corresponding standards for good practice determined by the International Organization for Standardization. It also explains how to identify the critical aspects of an LCA, provides detailed examples of LCA analysis and applications, and includes illustrated problems and solutions with concrete examples from water management, electronics, packaging, automotive, and other industries. In addition, readers will learn how to: Use consistent criteria to realize and evaluate an LCA independently of individual interests Understand the LCA methodology and become familiar with existing databases and methods based on the latest results of international research Analyze and critique a completed LCA Apply LCA methodology to simple case studies Geared toward graduate and undergraduate students studying environmental science and industrial ecology, as well as practicing environmental engineers, and sustainability professionals who want to teach themselves LCA good practices, Environmental Life Cycle Assessment demonstrates how to conduct environmental assessments for products throughout their life cycles. It presents existing methods and recent developments in the growing field of LCA and systematically covers goal and system definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment, and interpretation.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has developed in Australia over the last 20 years into a technique for systematically identifying the resource flows and environmental impacts associated with the provision of products and services. Interest in LCA has accelerated alongside growing demand to assess and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across different manufacturing and service sectors. Life Cycle Assessment focuses on the reflective practice of LCA, and provides critical insight into the technique and how it can be used as a problem-solving tool. It describes the distinctive strengths and limitations of LCA, with an emphasis on practice in Australia, as well as the application of LCA in waste management, the built environment, water and agriculture. Supported by examples and case studies, each chapter investigates contemporary challenges for environmental assessment and performance improvement in these key sectors. LCA methodologies are compared to the emerging climate change mitigation policy and practice techniques, and the uptake of ‘quick’ LCA and management tools are considered in the light of current and changing environmental agendas. The authors also debate the future prospects for LCA technique and applications.

This book introduces readers to Life Cycle Approach (LCA)-supported design solutions, through non-geometric-data-driven methodologies, to provide a clear picture of how to optimize individual designs in addressing ecological challenges. By offering LCA, the book gives designers a complimentary set of science-based perspectives and techniques with a focus on high data quality for clarity and public accessibility. While most design solutions and resources are meant to appeal to people by solving everyday problems, this book uses LCA designs to appeal to people through a combination of practicality, accuracy, and the need to decelerate ecological destruction through products offered to marketplace consumers. In essence, the book teaches designers how to craft environmentally responsive designs for their clients at little to no extra cost, but with necessary ecological benefits. The book analyzes the human desire for consumption, and suggests design innovations for promoting "best practices". LCA tools, data, and methodologies are explained and offered as these potential innovations for affecting positive environmental change. As an underlying component of LCA, the book defines the energy essentials related to environmental problems, and how LCA design solutions must address these factors while also appealing to a designated client-base. The book also teaches designers how to consider corporate incentives for trusting LCA designs, such as investor confidence, loyalty, and consumer trust. The book will appeal to a broad range of designers interested in sustainable and data-driven design, and may be utilized by non-LCA specialists in expanding their design perspectives and goals in the marketplace.

This open access book includes a selection of contributions from the Life Cycle Management 2019 Conference (LCM) held in Poznań, Poland, and presents different examples of scientific and practical contributions, showing an incorporation of life cycle approach into the decision processes on strategic and operational level. Special attention is drawn to applications of LCM to target, organize, analyze and manage product-related information and activities towards continuous improvement, along the different products life cycle. The selection of case studies presents LCM as a business management approach that can be used by all types of businesses and organizations in order to improve their sustainability performance. This book provides a cross-sectoral, current picture of LCM issues. The structure of the book is based on five-theme lines. The themes represent different objects that are focused on sustainability and LCM practices mainly related to: products, technologies, organizations, markets and policy issues as well as methodological solutions. The book brings together presentations from the world of science and the world of enterprises as well as institutions supporting economic development.

The journey towards sustainability requires that companies must find innovative ways to make profits and at the same time extend the traditional boundaries of business to include the environmental and social dimensions, a process known as Life Cycle Thinking. This Guide contains many examples illustrating how business organizations are putting Life Cycle Thinking into practice all over the world.

This book demonstrates the application of Life-cycle Cost Approach (LCCA) in the management of infrastructure and other investment projects in the context of developing countries. The main goal is to identify potential opportunities for the adoption LCCA in developing countries, with the help of case studies and best practices. The editors observe that developing countries are plagued with poor and fluctuating service delivery which affords low or no priority for environmental protection. They seek to instill at the policy-making level an understanding of why life-cycle cost assessment is central to achieving the goals of sustainable development as well as sustainable service delivery and to influence the behavior of sector stakeholders. The editors examine the evolution of LCCA from a project appraisal tool to a more comprehensive method of incorporating sustainable development aspects in a variety of sectors. By providing a compendium of concepts, tools and practical experiences, it seeks to broaden the application of LCCA, which is often limited to specific phases of the life-cycle with little or no weight given to environmental aspects. The aim of the book is to mainstream LCCA into governance processes at institutional levels from local to national, in order to increase the ability and willingness of decision makers - both users and those involved in service planning, budgeting and delivery - to reach better informed and more relevant choices among different types and levels of products and services.

The trend in industry and with the EPA is to prevent wastes before they are created instead of treating or disposing of them later. This book assists design/systems engineers and managers in designing or changing a product or set of processes in order to minimize the negative impact on the environment during its life cycle. It explains the overall concept of environmental life cycle analysis and breaks down each of the stages, providing a clear picture of the issues involved. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an introduction and overview of the environmental life cycle analysis process. Chapter 3 establishes the basis and methodologies required for analysis through description of the basic framework, definition of boundaries, use of checklists, data gathering processes, construction of models, and interpretation of results. Templates and special cases that may be encountered and how to handle them are addressed in Chapter 4. Chapters 5 through 9 go into detail about modeling, issues, and data collection for each stage of the product life cycle. The final chapter provides a summary of the various steps and offers ideas on how to present data and reports.