Life Cycle Engineering & Design Program
Abstract
During this decade, an increasing emphasis has been placed upon pollution prevention as a means to produce better products and systems while reducing environmental impacts from those systems. Several of the assessment tools and analytical techniques that have been used to do this, such as pollution prevention opportunity assessments, only look at on-site issues, ignoring impacts that might exist either upstream or downstream of the process. In order to capture these impacts, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was developed. LCA differs from other pollution prevention techniques in that it inventories all the resource, energy and cost inputs to a product, as well as the impacts from the associated waste streams, health and ecological burdens, and evaluates opportunities to improve the system on a life cycle scale.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA352050
Entities
People
- Kenneth R. Stone
Organizations
- United States Environmental Protection Agency