LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT IN THEORY – INTRODUCTION

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is currently the most popular technique for assessing the environmentalimpact of products, services and technologies over their entire life cycle ‘from cradle to grave’, ‘cradleto gate’ depending on the system boundary set for the study, or in the case of closed-loop ‘cradle tocradle’. The impact is determined taking into account the different categories of environmentalimpact. Although the method is divided into 4 basic clearly defined stages: goal and scope, life cycleinventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation, almost any of these stages can be extendedwith voluntary elements making the analysis much more detailed and difficult. An LCA analysis canbe carried out using different methods depending on the availability of data, the reason for the studyor the target group. The basis for conducting an LCA is to collect the necessary high-quality data,preferably from an original source, which is often very time-consuming. LCA databases (e.g.Ecoinvent, AusLCI, Agri-footprint, worldsteel) are helpful in this respect. Given the continuousdevelopment of LCA, the market offers many digital tools to perform LCA analyses (e.g. SimaPro,openLCA, OneClickLCA).The use of LCA makes it possible to locate system weaknesses that require modification in order toreduce the negative environmental impact of products, services and technologies. The article presentsconcepts with examples and the standards contained in EN ISO 14040 and EN ISO 1404.