Talk:Life-cycle assessment

I think the term "exergy" for the embodied energy is the correct term instead of Emergy.

Question
I am opposed to the proposed merger of the electric energy carbon footprint out of the carbon footprint section of wikipedia. Life cycle assessment is much broader, the better way would be to point to this entry for a portion of the LCA calculations pertaining to climate footprint (or carbon footprint as it is here being termed).

This is in fact a life cycle assessment, but specifically applying the technique to define the carbon emissions over the product life cycle. While it does belong under the LCA main heading, it is also a key aspect of carbon and climate change, so there is a good case for having it based within carbon footprinting. This is particularly the case as many lay people are interested and seeking information on carbon, whilst LCA wold be too technical a direction from them to come from initially. There is a bit of a conflict here between the purity of the informational structure and the usefulness to the average Wikipedia user. Hope this helps - comments please!

Jonathan Churchman-Davies —Preceding unsigned comment added by JChurchman-Davies (talk • contribs) 17:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "This" article isn't at all only about carbon emissions (or I don't understand what the first word of your comment is relating to). LCA is often much more than mere carbon accounting, though methods might be similar. Carbon accounting or carbon footprinting is mentioned in the 'see also' section. --83.79.157.250 (talk) 05:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Is the same Life Cycle Analysis as Life cycle assesment ?. Specially for biobutanol.Regards.

--Mac 13:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I have found at least three other article that seem to overlap with this one: life cycle cost analysis, life cycle analysis and life cycle energy analysis. "Life cycle cost analysis" has a mergeto tag pointing at Total cost of ownership, however, the TCO article specifically says that life cycle assessment differs from life cycle assessment. I would like to merge at least "life cycle analysis" and "life cycle energy analysis" content here and create redirects for the other articles that point here. Comments?

--Mwarren us 15:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that life cycle energy analysis is a subset of life cycle analysis. Also, in my experience the word analysis is used more often than assessment. Other than that, enjoy!

Patris Magnus 19:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * A current Google vote (Sept 07) results in 1'000'000 hits for 'life cycle assessment' and 700'000 hits for 'life cycle analysis'. To me they are synonyms. I use 'life cycle assessment' (Gabor Doka) --85.0.151.61 15:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree and have acted on the discussion here. Life cycle cost analysis is now a disambiguation page that points to life cycle assessment and whole-life cost, the two subjects which it seemed to cover. OceanKiwi (talk) 16:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Tprentice (talk) 03:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * "A criticism of LCEA is that it attempts to eliminate monetary cost analysis, that is replace the currency by which economic decisions are made with an energy currency." - Why would this be a criticism? More explanation would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Merge NMVOC?
Merge. NMVOC is only a definition, and should be merged in, too. ENeville 16:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose merge disagree with Patris Magnus, NMVOC (a group of chemical substances) is completely different from LCA (a method to assess the environmental impact of a product or service. See my comment at Talk:NMVOC. Shangri67 11:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose merge. Agree with Shangri67, for the same reason. Also left a more detailed comment at Talk:NMVOC IgorW 10:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Oppose merge. NMVOC is not a subset of life cycle analysis. Sunray 18:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Given the comments above, and those on Talk:NMVOC, over a span of more than six months, I conclude that the decision is no merge. I will remove the tags. Sunray 18:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Carbon footprint is only part of the LCA analysis. Merging them would not be a ggod option but some links are indeed necessary —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.246.199.194 (talk) 09:49, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Energy Recovery
"While incineration produces more greenhouse gas emissions than landfilling, the waste plants are well-fitted with filters to minimize this negative impact."

I have yet to see a 'filter' that can capture CO2. Filters are used to capture soot, CO2 can be removed from flue gas through, for example, scrubbing, adsorption or membranes. Also, waste plants are as far as I know not included in the whole CCS story, only power plants are at the moment. Tristan Groot212.67.162.92 (talk) 08:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge of Water-energy nexus
I am proposing to merge Water-energy nexus into here. The current article is a tiny snapshot of west coast American thinking and is greatly biased and barely touches the surface of what it purports to represent. Very very far from a world view. It is also misleading and perhaps downright wrong - I just didn't have the will to live to check it all out.  Velella  Velella Talk 14:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Opposed, the article is definitely long enough without even explaining fundamental terms such as "functional unit". Use an ordinary link, the subject is not an common part of LCA methodology or literature(AndreasEm (talk) 23:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC))

Opposed, the only way that other articles, including the Water-energy nexus, could be included into this article are as examples. To include them as examples would require that the examples have quotable references. If the examples had quotable references they would likely be a subject that deserves an article of their own, obviating the need to include them in this article. The subject of LCA is so broad already, defined in several ISO standards and supported by an ever growing list of software, that it does not need the addition of extraneous material. Tango Mike Bravo (talk) 18:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Opposed, there are very good reasons to discuss the water-energy nexus that are quite separate from the long-term environmental impacts traditionally associated with life cycle assessments, e.g., energy planning for water projects, water planning for energy projects, the holistic effects of one-service disruption on society, the effects to society of climate change, etc., to name a few (mebates 18:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.78.83.254 (talk)

Opposed, the connection is tangential at best. Water-energy nexus is important enough to warrant its own page, and as AndreasEm mentioned, this article is long enough, and doesn't even cover all the necessary aspects. Trevorzink (talk) 02:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

School Project
For those who are editing this article as part of a University project, please see guidelines for School and University Projects ( talk→  BWilkins   ←track ) 18:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Other names
Alejandro V.: Cited source on first line([1]) doesn't say anything about those other possible names.

Missing web page in references
Reference #6 links to a missing page here: Life-cycle_assessment. url=http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/pdfs/chapter1_frontmatter_lca101.pdf

Mikk0384 (talk) 06:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Life Cycle Assessment Calculators
Perhaps some content related to Life Cycle Assessment Calculators could be added here:

I found a few links fairly quickly just using Google:

Google search was life cycle assessment calculator:


 * http://www.lcacalculator.com/ -- company based in London -- (costs about $70 per month individual, or $3200 a month per small corporate team)
 * http://www.eiolca.net/ -- a project based at Carnegie Mellon University.
 * http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/datasetArea.vm -- a project from the European Commission.
 * I could list two other resources here:
 * Social Hotspots database: . Cost is $200 per year for companies, and $100 per year for academic and non-profit users. (they are offering a short course May 14 and May 15)
 * openLCA -- Free and open source Life Cycle Assessment tool offered by GreenDelta.
 * Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 23:34, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

These seem to be more geared toward people doing research in the field, or companies.

So I had in mind a calculator more geared to a consumer who seeks to be environmentally conscious in terms of buying products that minimize total impact on the environment (both in the use of the product, and also in its manufacture).
 * And -- it could include more than just the manufacture -- but also the other parts of the lifecycle -- from cradle to grave (or some variation or cradle-to-grave). Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Something similar to what CarbonFund has as a calculator for rough estimate of emissions related to various life activities.

Or perhaps this one here which I just found with a Google search:

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/

For example, I just bought a small refrigerator on amazon, and the cost was $139.00 -- but what was the environmental impact in terms of carbon emissions, raw materials, particulate emissions, etc. necessary for the manufacture from cradle to grave. Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I suppose at the very least the cost is correlated to the environmental impact, and so that can be one measure.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 00:19, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Life-Cycle Assessment and Social Impacts
In a NYTimes web site comment section I raised the issue of life-cycle assessment, and social impacts in an article covering the 2013 Savar building collapse.

I said that, "Life cycle assessment is focused on environmental impacts....". After taking a look at the lead of the Wikipedia article I didn't think social impacts were generally a part of life-cycle assessment.

However, I happened to go back and watch some of Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence conference which took place in 2011, Greg Norris was speaking, and he spoke about measuring social impacts using the Social Hotspots Database.


 * "....and these are worker hours, and that brings me my fourth lesson when we purchase one product we are touching millions of people. On Earth, every day, we are touching millions of people with our purchases, and this database helps us understand how well are they paid, how long are they working -- are they forced to work too long, and so on. So we can actually have a social footprint beside our environmental footprint....."


 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C73rUWE8Iz0#t=1885s

Reading through the full article it doesn't speak much about social impacts (other than in critiques where it mentions something called the Agroecology tool) so I don't know to what extent that is analyzed within life-cycle assessment more broadly, or whether/how it should be covered in the article.

It seems to me that there can be a fair amount of variety in working conditions within a particular country in an industry.

I recall reading this passage in a NYTimes article covering the garment industry in Bangladesh which was published in 2001:


 * "Bangladesh's garment factories run the gamut. Some seem models of progressive management, with health clinics, day care centers and brightly lighted lunch rooms. Workers wear surgical masks to screen out fibers in the air, and shiny red fire extinguishers hug the walls at regular intervals. Other factories are bleak, stuffy places with cramped aisles that dead-end into haphazard knolls of fabric. Guards are stationed at locked gates, and fire prevention largely consists of empty red water pails."

This seems consistent with what Saif Khan, who was a factory compliance supervisor for Phillips Van Heusen, said in Huffington Post:


 * "The audits and inspections are too much focused on checklists," said Saif Khan, who worked for Phillips Van Heusen, the owner of brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, in Bangladesh until 2011 as a factory compliance supervisor.
 * "They touch on broader areas but do not consider the realities on the ground," he said.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 23:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposition of adding the following short description paragraph on Social Lifecycle Assessment:

Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a useful tool for companies to identify and assess potential social impacts along the lifecycle of a product or service on various stakeholders (for example: workers, local communities, consumers). SLCA is framed by the UNEP/SETAC’s Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products published in 2009 in Quebec. The tool builds on the ISO 26000:2010 Guidelines for Social Responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines.

Proposition of creating a new page for Social Lifecycle Assessment because it seems more difficult to include it into this article...

BubblySunshine (talk) 01:58, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiLCA - Demand is the answer!
We are currently working on a project which aims at making Life Cycle Thinking assessible to both innovators, experts and consumers so that they can interact with each other and make informed decisions whenever they are to purchase a product whether you are a:


 * 1) Small and medium enterprises (SME) scale business that have just entered research and development phase, if you are an academic researching an interesting issue within traceability - ethical and social, environmental assessment, consumer communication etc.
 * 2) Comsumer  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakob Raffn WikiLCA (talk • contribs) 10:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Comsumer  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakob Raffn WikiLCA (talk • contribs) 10:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Current image summary of LCA
I cannot read the current image from Commons of the LCA summary. Unlike most images it gets smaller when I click on it and the green color is hard on my eyes. Could someone improve this? Thanks. Jim Derby (talk) 12:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that image should be removed, I'm pretty sure it is non-standard to link to an infographic on the topic, especially so high up in the article. The infographic is also a very low quality image, as Jim said. Diego von Beck Guaiquil 06:48, 28 January 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diegovb (talk • contribs)

Dr. Pardo Martinez's comment on this article
Dr. Pardo Martinez has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"It is important to improve visibility of figures"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Pardo Martinez has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Alexander Cotte Poveda - Clara Pardo Martinez, 2013. "CO2 emissions in German, Swedish and Colombian manufacturing industries," SERIE DE DOCUMENTOS EN ECONOMIA Y VIOLENCIA 010464, CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN VIOLENCIA, INSTITUCIONES Y DESARROLLO ECONOMICO (VIDE).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:43, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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Well-to-wheel
Hi all, I was reviewing the section on Well-to-wheel and thought we could add some clarity by adding this sentence: "WtW analysis is useful for reflecting the different efficiencies and emissions of energy technologies and fuels at both the upstream and downstream stages, giving a more complete picture of real emissions".

Do please let me know if you're interested in updating the text. AlainMathuren (talk) 3 August 2017

Hi all, just to let you know, I will go ahead and make the change.AlainMathuren (talk) 27 October 2017

External links modified (January 2018)
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Sentence redacted for lack of clarity, Main ISO phases of LCA section
In the "Main ISO phases of LCA" section, in the "Goal and Scope" subsection, the second bullet, the functional unit, closed with this sentence:"So to explain this a functional system which is inputs, processes and outputs contains a functional unit, that fulfills a function, for example paint is covering a wall, making a functional unit of 1m² covered for 10 years. The functional flow would be the items necessary for that function, so this would be a brush, tin of paint and the paint itself." Because I could make no sense of this, and because it lacks a citation to consult to make sense of it, I moved the sentence here, for clarification (or final interment). Cheers. 2601:246:C700:9B0:99AF:B5A5:917:EB75 (talk) 06:56, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

The title of this page should be changed to Life cycle assessment (no hyphen)
This is the spelling used in ISO 14040, etc., and is the standard way of spelling it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erlend Kvitrud (talk) 07:45, 20 October 2021 (UTC)