Life Cycle Assessment Software for Product and Process Sustainability Analysis

In recent years, life cycle assessment (LCA), a methodology for assessment of environmental impacts of products and services, has become increasingly important. This methodology is applied by decision makers in industry and policy, product developers, environmental managers, and other non-LCA specialists working on environmental issues in a wide variety of sectors. Especially for chemical engineers and scientists, it is essential to have an understanding of the LCA-methodology when developing new products. Performing an LCA is time intensive and the choices and assumptions made during system modeling, especially with respect to the system boundaries, the processes to include, the used technology, and geography are often decisive for the result of an LCA study. The outcomes of an LCA have to be analyzed in a critical way, especially if they are used for business decisions and policy making. Different scenarios have to be studied.. Two examples are presented where LCA-software (SimaPro5) is used. The first one is a simple analysis of a coffee machine to obtain information on the environmental impact of the processes. The second one investigates different scenarios for waste treatment of paper and cardboard.