Life cycle assessment

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are carried out to assess the environmental impact of products in each of these stages:

• extracting and processing raw materials
• manufacturing and packaging
• use and operation during its lifetime
• disposal at the end of its useful life, including transport and distribution at each stage.

Use of water, resources, energy sources and production of some wastes can be fairly easily quantified. Allocating numerical values to pollutant effects is less straightforward and requires value judgements, so LCA is not a purely objective process.

Selective or abbreviated LCAs can be devised to evaluate a product but these can be misused to reach pre-determined conclusions, eg in support of claims for advertising purposes.

Students should be able to carry out simple comparative LCAs for shopping bags made from plastic and paper.

WS 1.3, 4, 5

LCAs should be done as a comparison of the impact on the environment of the stages in the life of a product, and only quantified where data is readily available for energy, water, resources and wastes.

Interpret LCAs of materials or products given appropriate information.

MS 1a

Recognise and use expressions in decimal form.

MS 1c

Use ratios, fractions and percentages.

MS 1d