Lca: a practical guide for students, designers and business managers

A 'Fast Track' guide to LCA Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a well defined method to calculate the environmental burden of a product or service, has been made so complex that it seems to be a job for specialists only. This 'Practical Guide' to LCA gives a hands on approach for students, designers, architects, and business managers with limited time. Starting with the common sense, and building on it with practical solutions for, sometimes, complex issues (like recycling). To assess the sustainability of your innovative ideas, practical guidance is given during the decision making process. It does not take a lot of time and a lot of money. The 'Fast Track' LCA of this guide can be made in hours, and is just as accurate as the classical LCA. This guide shows also the way to enable cradle-to-cradle calculations: It provides practical solutions to calculate the impact of recycling It shows how to start with LCA in the early ('fussy') design stages ('Life Cycle Design') Contents: 1. Introduction • 2. The system you want to study • 3. The step by step approach and LCA as an iterative process • 4. Transport and the use phase • 5. End of life and by-products • 6. Services in LCA • 7. Cradle-to-Cradle • 8. Carbon sequestration in wood • 9. Land-use, water and other issues • Appendices • References • Abbreviations • List of figures and tables • Index