Science discuss 2
Life Cycle Analysis Measured steps to improving products.
This is a short presentation covering life cycle analysis for design students and professionals. Life cycle analysis, or LCA, is an important tool for designers to be aware of, understand, and be able to use, in order to improve design decision-making, especially with respect to the environmental impact of what we make.
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It can often seem like we live in a world of things, but really, we live in a world of processes. Things are a snapshot of one stage in the process, in which each item is made, used, and disposed. of.
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And there are many different ways to make or do the same thing, or nearly the same thing. So how do we choose amongst different design options to achieve equivalent ends? That’s where Life Cycle Analysis comes in.
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What is Life Cycle Analysis for?
Better understand a product's environmental impact in order to target strategic changes in its production (e.g., reduce ecological footprint, to save money, avoid regulatory risks).
To compare the environmental impact of two or more products.
Life cycle analysis is used to better understand a product’s environmental impact, in order to target strategic changes in its production, for example to reduce its negative ecological footprint, save money, or avoid regulatory risks. It can also be used to compare the environmental impact of two or more products.
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Life cycle analyses can seem pretty clinical, but they are actually fascinating. What starts as a static object transforms into a complex story that takes you to far away places, in which you come to better understand how people have learned to make many extraordinary things.
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Anatomy of a Life Cycle Analysis
Inventory
Impact
Improvement
We can think of a life cycle analysis as having three overarching components: inventory, impact, and improvement.
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Inventory
Begins with defining scope - what part of the
life cycle will you be evaluating (raw material
extraction, manufacturing, distribution,
disposal), and to what level of detail?
Usually begins with asking, why do you want
to do a LCA? What are your goals?
Define the elements to analyze (Materials? Energy? Chemicals?).
For each element, determine what materials and energy go into its production, and what wastes come out (inputs and outputs).
The first step begins by defining the scope of your analysis. What part of the life cycle of a product do you want to evaluate, and to what level of detail? The inventory phase usually begins by asking, why do we even want or need to do a Life Cycle Analysis in the first place? What are we hoping to get out of it? What are our goals? Then, what elements of the product will you be considering? It’s materials? Energy use? Chemicals? Water? Or all of the above? And finally, for each aspect of the life cycle we consider, we need to determine what’s involved, what materials and energy go into its production, and what wastes come out.
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Impact
Use the best information available, assign
environmental consequences to each
element in your inventory (i.e., what kind and
amount of harm does it do?).
Put in terms that can be compared.
The impact step involves assembling the best information you can find in order to assign environmental consequences to each element in your inventory, and quantifying these impacts using terms or units that can be compared.
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Improvement
Identify opportunities and potential alternatives (e.g., recycled materials, alternative energy, improved manufacturing process, etc.).
Detail relative advantages and disadvantages of each potential alternative to the status quo.
Select and implement.
The last step involves identifying opportunities and potential alternatives to producing the design, detailing the advantages and disadvantages of each potential alternative, and then selecting and implementing these choices.
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So for example, let’s say you were going to do a life cycle analysis of this shoe.
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A simple flow chart of the manufacturing process for this shoe might look something like this.
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Inventory stage – inputs and outputs
Materials and energy are used in each part of the manufacturing process, and waste outputs result.
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Impact stage
What are the environmental, financial, and/or social impacts of each input and output identified?
What are the environmental, financial, and social impacts of each input and output identified? The impact stage requires lots of research to assemble the relevant information.
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Impact stage
What are the environmental, financial, and/or social impacts of each input and output identified?
For instance, the first step in the process of making a leather shoe actually involves growing cows.
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Growing cows may require inputs of fertilizer, energy, and result in the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
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Impact stage – making comparisons
The environmental impacts of these inputs and outputs can be quantified, and alternative manufacturing processes compared, in this hypothetical case leather vs. plastic shoe material.
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Improvement stage – identify opportunities
In some cases, there may be relatively clear advantages to one process over another in terms of an environmental cost. Often, however, each process will have different and sometimes difficult to compare advantages and disadvantages. But a life cycle analysis can help locate places where a manufacturing process can be improved. A leather shoe company may use this information, for instance, to invest in air pollution mitigation technology in order to reduce its negative climate impacts.
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Life Cycle Analysis can’t help us with every kind of choice, but it is a powerful tool to help us make measured improvements in how we design whatever we make.
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Credits
Car tire: www.123rf.com
Toothpaste cartoon: Rube Goldberg
Keyboard exploded view: www.cultofmac.com
Exploded bike: Todd McLellan
Steel manufacturing: www.constructionweekonline.com
LCA shoe example: www.istc.illinois.edu
Cupcake tractor beam: kidslinkcares.com
© Sam Stier 2014
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