Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): principles and practical implications for industrial projects

This article discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of the application of the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. LCA enables to consider the environmental impacts of the whole production system, including upstream and downstream processes and to estimate their consequences already at the project planning stage. It was illustrated using the case study of the planned furniture production plant representing the industrial sector. The conventional simplified cradle-to-gate LCA analysis, using SimaPro software and the ReCiPe Endpoint method, was performed. It revealed that unlike the findings of EIA made with the support of traditional methods, not waste, airborne emissions and noise, but the particleboard and the fibreboard used by the planned furniture production plant have the most detrimental impact on the environment in all impact categories. The greatest damage it causes in the areas of protection of resources followed by ecosystems. The research proved high applicability of EIA-LCA approach for the evaluation of the environmental impacts of planned industrial projects.