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Principles, philosophies and policies for corporate environmental sustainability
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
Life cycle analysis or assessment (LCA) was developed in the same time period as ecological footprint tools, offering a method of measuring the impact of a product on the environment through its entire life cycle, from “cradle to grave”, comprising energy and material flows and the impacts of extraction, acquisition, production, use and disposal (Robertson 2017). LCA can be used by companies, consumers, activists and policymakers; for example, it allows a firm or industry to identify areas where improvements and cost savings may be achieved or to provide a basis for claims about how environmentally friendly or superior a product is (Hackett 2011). LCA normally consists of two stages, firstly, an inventory and secondly, the impact assessment, although Elkington (1997) includes four stages: initiation, inventory, impact analysis and improvement.
Designing with the Life Cycle in Mind
Published in Graham A. Ormondroyd, Angela F. Morris, Designing with Natural Materials, 2018
A system boundary is then defined to further formalise the scope of the study. This indicates which stages of the life cycle, and which pathways of the production process, are to be included in the analysis. At its most comprehensive, a cradle-to-grave approach encompasses all stages from initial raw materials extraction or cultivation through to EOL. In practice, shorter systems are often considered, in particular when assessing product footprints from an organisational perspective. These shorter cradle-to-gate, or even gate-to-gate systems effectively model the environmental impacts over which the organisation has control, whether that be directly (through its own operations) or indirectly (through its supply chain purchasing decisions). Such studies typically draw a boundary at the point of hand-over to the customer (i.e. ‘the factory gate’) and often act as the basis for published eco-profiles and product declarations.
Sustainable Manufacturing of Sports Products
Published in Franz Konstantin Fuss, Aleksandar Subic, Martin Strangwood, Rabindra Mehta, Routledge Handbook of Sports Technology and Engineering, 2013
Aleksandar Subic, Bahman Shabani, Mehdi Hedayati, Enda Crossin
HSA is a quantitative method used to assess a product along a certain phase of its life cycle to identify key issues and priorities (high-impact processes) for improvement and reduction of the value chain footprint. HSA can either be applied to a certain phase of the product’s value chain or be expanded over the entire value chain of a product (Figure 2.2). From the sustainability point of view, HSA can focus on the resource/emission intensity of a product only (e.g. energy, water, material and emission) along its manufacturing process (Seow and Rahimifard 2011). Such a quantitative approach can be employed in a broader sense by taking both environmental (resource/emission intensities) and social aspects into account over the entire life cycle of a product from ‘cradle to grave’ (Liedtke et al. 2010; Jayal et al. 2010), which is often called sustainable life-cycle assessment (LCA). The HSA approach presented in this chapter is primarily focused on resource consumption and emission generation within the manufacturing phase of a product.
An overview of blade materials and technologies for hydrokinetic turbine application
Published in International Journal of Green Energy, 2023
Muhamad Hasfanizam Mat Yazik, Chang Wei Shyang, Mohammad Hafifi Hafiz Ishak, Farzad Ismail
With increasing concern toward the environment, the product life cycle and end of life assessment are crucial to keep track of the input and emission produced by the product throughout its life cycle. In doing that, the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool is used for audit of the materials and emission throughout a product’s lifecycle. This is often referred as the cradle-to-grave analysis as it analyses the product from the initial extraction of material, processing, assembly, usage and disposal of the waste involved. Simplistically, LCA looks at energy consumed and carbon dioxide emission as indicators for environmental effects of the product during its life. There are four steps in LCA which are goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation (Miller, Landis, and Schaefer 2011). For the purpose of comparison, the life cycle assessment is conducted on a micro-hydrokinetic turbine with different blade materials. This is narrowed specifically for a Savonius turbine with previously studied by (Salleh et al. 2020). The goal is to compare the effect of these materials on the micro-hydrokinetic turbine environmental effects. A process life cycle inventory will be used in this assessment which allows the breakdown of each process which differs in each material. The general process life cycle of the hydrokinetic turbine is shown in Figure 12.
Investigation of occupant-related energy aspects of the National Building Code of Canada: Energy use impact and potential least-cost code-compliant upgrades
Published in Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 2021
Ahmed Abdeen, William O’Brien, Burak Gunay, Guy Newsham, Heather Knudsen
Globally, several financial methods are widely used to evaluate the economic investments of energy-efficiency requirements set by building codes. For example, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method that expands the assessment boundary beyond energy consumption, investment cost, and carbon emission price to consider the environmental impacts throughout a building’s life (i.e., cradle to grave) from raw material acquisition, processing, manufacturing, use and finally its disposal (Sharma et al. 2011). The more commonly used method is the life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. This method evaluates the feasibility of various energy efficiency upgrade measures, based on net present values, to determine the overall economic performance over the life span of either a new/existing residential building (Morrissey and Horne 2011).
Gravity and gravity-pump sewage systems including energy embodied in each system – case studies
Published in Urban Water Journal, 2021
The life cycle assessment (LCA) means the analysis of the whole cycle of existence. It is one of the several environmental management techniques to study the potential environmental impact during the “lifetime” of the product (i.e. “cradle-to-grave” concept (Udo de Haes and Heijungs 2007; Hammond and Jones 2008)). It starts from the extraction of the raw materials, through production, the system usage, up to final disposal. The “lifetime” can be divided into three phases (De Boer et al. 2003): the construction (from the design, through the raw material extraction, the production of the materials used in the system, the transportation, up to the work carried out during production),the system operation and maintenance (using the object and performing maintenance works),decommissioning of the system (dismantling, removal and waste disposal).