Life Cycle Assessment

Prof. Brajesh Kumar Dubey

Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Lecture – 14
Environmental Data Collection and LCA Methodology (Contd.)

Welcome back. So, with all the background information, now we will get into the LCA
methodology. So, how we do life cycle analysis? So, you already had good background
some of the LCA concepts of the very beginning. Now we will start getting into what
LCA is, how it is done. So, we will recap some of the basic things related to life cycle
analysis and start looking at some examples.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:53)

So, we talked about this green and sustainability. That is how we started this course.
What is sustainability? And what is what does it mean to be green? We define
sustainability as the use of resources today in such a way so that our future generation
can make use of resources. What does it mean to be green? Green and sustainability or
you can say environmental friendly these are all interchangeable terms.
(Refer Slide Time: 01:33)

But why in terms of sustainability, the United Nations world commission or environment
and development they come up with this sustainable development definition?
Development that meets a need of the present without compromising the ability of future
generation to meet their own needs. So, this is what the sustainability is. Along different
lines the people got about environmental friendly, sustainable products, green products
environmentally preferable. So, lot of these things are used interchangeably when we try
to convey the meaning of sustainability.

So, there is a difference between sustainability and durability. Something durable may be
good for sustainability, but the sustainability does not mean durability. Durability is
something different. So, something biodegradable maybe considered, as it is good, but
we need to again find out whether it is really good. In terms of biodegradable and
recyclable, recyclable is especially say, if you have to end up using lot of energy to
recycle it that may not be really sustainable. Then ozone friendly: We have an ozone
hole on top so, we want to make sure that it is a product that we have is ozone friendly
does not create climate change and those kind of problems.
Eco design: Eco design is again where you have a more like an environmental friendly
design and the last bullet over there is what is known as a greenwashing. Greenwashing
is where people claim things to be growing green. People claim things to be
environmental friendly, but they actually are not. So, how will you find all? Whether
things are environmental friendly or not. We can do that by doing this LCA exercise
which you will see example pretty soon.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:19)

So, again why we are worried about all these things? What can our earth handle? That is,
there is a capacity that our earth can handle. Population: This is almost like a 10 year old
data. Right now our population is more than 7 billion and 6.7 billion. We do not worry
too much about the absolute number, but if you compare, the low income countries, the
lower developed countries they have a nearly 5.4 billion out of 7, like 6.7 billion. So, that
is you are looking at almost a like 70 to 80 percent population or nearly 80 percent. More
than 70 percent population of the world stays in low developed countries. The medium
developed countries around 1.2 billion, then US is around 300 million.

So, in the medium developed countries rate of growth is very low, at the low income
countries the rate of growth is higher and US is around 1 percent. So, it’s again
population of the world is growing up which we talked about in the very beginning of the
class as well. As the population grows up, we have more people to feed, more people,
more houses needs to be built for the people around the world. Then there is an estimate
that earth can maximum handle 13.4 billion people and we have to look at where we are
headed. Like we have to a start looking at renewable energy source. Because in earlier
videos we saw that we use lot of energy, energy is needed. So, average per unit energy
consumption is 3 kilowatt per person that is the average energy consumption. In US they
uses 12 kilowatt per person and that includes all sorts of energy. Industrialized 7.5
kilowatt, Denmark is 5.1, developing countries is 1 kilowatt per person.

So, say if entire world starts following the so called US dream, where people want to
have big car, big houses, refrigerator, like a air conditioner and all those things that
requires lot of energy. If the whole world starts thinking of having to have a lifestyle of
what the United States has, we will probably need 3 or 4 of the mother earth to supply
that much kind of resources.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:55)

So, what does that mean in terms of science? Where what does the science say, “Green is
trendy”, something green, say it is fashionable. People feel good about that, “Yes it is a
green product!” So, industries also looking for ways to green their products and
manufacturing process. Individual and families are looking to green their homes and
lifestyles. There are so many websites these days out there which can help you to come
up with your own carbon footprint or environmental footprint, on a day to day basis.
Based on how you live, they can give you an environmental footprint and then you can
modify your lifestyle and then you can reduce your environmental footprint as well. So,
that is can be done too.

So, how can you tell if something is really green? So, how to find out if something is
really green? What is currently happening to achieve the goal? So, for that scientists
perform Life Cycle Assessment. As you can see, the picture over here, from the supplier,
things goes to the transport, goes to manufacturing, to the packaging, then use, then it’s
disposed. Say if you go from the raw material extraction, only up to the packaging that is
called cradle to gate, cradle to gate including the four includes four stages.

So, you have raw material acquisition, transport it to manufacturing plant, manufacturing
plant makes it transported to the packaging and goes to the malls and supers like a big
size stores are the small size stores whatever based on where you are in the world. And
that is where it ends. This is your cradle to gate that is not a cradle to grave, but cradle to
gate. Cradle to grave that we talked about earlier is, you go all the way up to the disposal.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:53)

So, life cycle assessment is a scientific way to look at going green. So, when we say we
are going green this LCA is a scientific way of looking at going green. That is what it’s
all about.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:09)

So, life cycle assessment is a compilation and evaluation of input - output in the potential
environmental impact of a product system throughout it life cycle. So, what does that
mean? It is essentially it is an accounting exercise. It is like an environmental accounting
exercise. Like if you have done accounting at the banks or any company’s balance sheet
they will have, what is the input coming into the company, how much money came in,
how much money got a expended and where and what are the different heads. Similarly,
here we are looking at we are compiling and evaluating all the inputs and outputs and the
potential environmental impact of any product or services. So, that is another thing many
times when you hear that concept having a systems thinking. So, this is what systems
thinking is.

Life cycle analysis is helps you to have a systems thinking, where you are thinking in a
systems approach. So, you establish an environmental profile of the system and then you
come up, then you come up with the solution. You analyse it and find out what is the
total environmental footprint.
So, when we do the water analysis, wastewater analysis of the solid waste analysis for
the environmental sample we had a standard method. Similarly, here we have a method
as you can see in the green box on top. There is ISO method for international
organization for standardization ensures that LCA is completed in a certain way. So,
there is an ISO method which you can also find on Google. So, you will see how the ISO
method is employed here. But ISO method is such that, say if I am doing an LCA here in
India or somebody is doing an LCA over in US or in Japan or wherever we can compare
each other’s work, if you are looking at similar kind of product we can compare each
other’s work if you have followed a standard method.

So, what can be done with the LCA? Why we should do LCA? It helps with the product
and the project development and more improvement. So, it helps you to make a product
more green, more environmental friendly, same thing with your project and also improve
your project and you can also do for the strategic planning. You can plan, say for
example, in recent past I was involved with… there is a area called Peel region in
Ontario Canada, very close to Toronto. And there, it’s all together three towns around 2
million population. So, 20 lakhs not too big from Indian standard, but pretty big from an
Ontario standard. So, its 20 million population, they were doing integrated waste
management plan, where they want to look at for the different options out there which
one seems to be more environmental friendly. So, for that in terms of their plan they
employed LCA method.

So, I was working on the different options that the city, the Peel region came up with. I
did the LCA on them to say, out of these option a b c and d which one has the least
environmental footprint. So, I helped them kind of make some judgemental on that line.
We did not do the detailed LCA, we just did a quick LCA to find out what. So that helps
in the strategic planning. So, similarly you can use it for the public policy making in
terms of environmental policy to find out whether if you are claiming certain things will
be green, as I will give you one example of when you do not. Like how this helps in the
policy then also marketing and eco declaration. Many places in the world today people
like to buy green stuff they want to use green stuff. So, it can also be used as a marketing
tool it can be used in the eco declaration tool, so those things are also pretty handy.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:13)

So, this particular slide kind of gives you an idea of what is the product life cycle. So,
when you talked about product life cycle, you are starting from say raw material
acquisition, that is the very beginning. So, if you are an engineering student, your mining
friends will help you mine all these materials. So, when you go for raw material
acquisition, you have for each of these boxes this is kind of the product life cycle stages
and we will go this I will try to explain this to you one by one.

So, here M and E is your material and energy input to the process and distribution, W is
the waste and that waste does not have to be always solid waste it could be a gas it could
be liquid or could be solid. So, it is basically the waste that is coming out and there other
could be some output from the product process or distribution as well.

So, the first box here is the raw material acquisition say if you want to make anything,
even if you want to make a very small like if you want to build this pen, if you want to
make this pen for this pen also there are different we have a cap here we have a nib and
there are different types of plastics and if you go for a like a different types of material
many times they may also have a spring in there which will have metal and you need
some ink there to write. So, different types of materials, different types of chemical has
gone into making it. So, if you go back and look at this particular chat over here the first
one the raw material acquisition is where we look at what are the different material that
we need to make any product. So, and that is your that is the part. So, once the material
has been acquired it will, it has to be processed say you look at your cell phone, you look
at your smartphone. The Smartphone, most of the smartphone they look cool because
that is what their marketing thing is that to make them look cool, but there are lot of
metals are there, there is a lot of rare earth metals present, there is a plastic present, many
times its a blended plastic, there could be some iron present, but the iron is not as an iron
that you will see in iron sheet. So, they get processed. So, that is what is happening in the
second box over here.

So, your material is getting processed where it is making into a form, so that it can go to
a product. So, in the first you have a raw material acquisition. So, and this M and E in
into the M and E which is the material energy input that comes into each one of these
boxes then you have the material being processed that is what your metallurgy friends or
your mechanical friends will help you do that as well.

Then after material is processed it will go to the manufacture and assembly here again
your mostly mechanical electrical those people will be involved. So, they will be, there
will get manufactured and they will it is assembled if you are talking about some
mechanical devices if you are talking about buildings and other stuff your civil and
architectural friends will help you with that. So, so that is manufacture and assembly
again you will have some material and energy input then it will be used and during the
use there could be some service that is being provided some repair, some maintenance
those things will be there, once the uses is gone then it will go to retirement and recovery
and after retirement and recovery after whatever you cannot be recovered then it goes to
treatment and finally, to disposal. And so, all these steps is what is known as your
product life cycle. So, here is your cradle you are the very beginning of where you start
acquiring the raw material to make the product and at the end is your grave when you put
it into a disposal system. So, this is your cradle to grave product life cycle.

So, that is how we define the cradle to grave product life cycle you will make sure that
you understand this, you listen this is video again and again to make sure you get the
concept of this cradle to grave because you will be using this concept in subsequent
problems that we will be solving in this particular course. So, as part of this step there are
certain we have not talked about this aspect here will which will do it right now. So,
when you do the retirement and recovery part of it you can bring it back and reuse it if it
is a reusable form it can be repaired and we can reuse again part of it can be taken back if
it is not reusable, but the material from them can be reused.

So, we can re manufacture, so it can come back into the manufacture and assembly plant
where the things can be re manufactured into a new product then some of it can go back
to the material processing if we can this we can closed loop, recycle that is call closed
loop within the plant itself we are recycling it and there could be some which is an open
loop recycle where if you have say some laptops and other stuff where you are metals
glass and other stuff from the laptop can go to a metal recycling plant or a glass recycling
plant. So, that is how it gets managed.

So, this is essentially your product life cycle. So, this is a very very important slide for
you in this particular course. So, I would encourage you to make sure that you have a
very good understanding of all the different steps that goes into the life cycle of a product
because that is what will be referring too many times during the course of this like a 20
hour course.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:38)

So, once you understand that that product life cycle what is in there then you have to do
the, if you want to do this LCA there is a method of doing it and this four there are four
steps of doing the LCA and these four steps again came from that ISO methodology
because as I said earlier we use a standard methods of doing LCA. So, one of what
makes up LCA we start with the goal and scope definition. So, you need to define what is
an LCA like what is the purpose of LCA, who is the audience, so if you want to make an
LCA for example, if you are running a company if you are running a company you
produce certain products. So, one option you want to do an LCA exercise life cycle
assessment exercises is to find out what is the environmental footprint of your product
that you are producing.

And the environmental footprint one thing you can look at your process and you can one
in the process you see that process a b c d again your process chain you have unit process
1 2 3 4 5 different unit processes are there, you can decide that out of these 4 5 unit
processes that I have this particular unit 3, unit process 3 has a bigger environmental
footprint. So, how come I go and improve this unit process 3 what I can do with this unit
process 3, you can go and talk to your chemical engineers or all the process engineers
whoever is involved and say that this has like a higher environmental footprint how to
reduce it, so that could be one goal where you are actually trying to improve your
product, you are trying to make your product more environmental friendly.

Because there is already a market out there were people want to have products which is
more environmental friendly as supposed to a product which is less environmental
friendly, but not a day too much extra cost, little bit of extra cost say 5 to 10 percent
people may still may do it especially like upper middle class or some middle class people
who are environmentally causes they may still go and buy something which is a slightly
more costlier if we can prove to them that it is more environmental friendly. And how
will prove them because then if you have an independent life cycle kind of study done by
an independent agency and then that satisfies that yes this product is better than the other
products or competitive products.

So, if you have to pay additional 10 percent or even say 15 percent you may still get
away with that, but if the price is too much very difficult because environment is great,
but at the same time people look at their purse first because if it is too costly then it
becomes difficult to sell those product. So, that could be one option of a what is the
purpose of doing LCA other option is you want to compare that you are making a mobile
say you are making one particular type of mobile and you want to go and check what
kind of other manufacturers are there with a similar type of configuration what is your
environmental footprint as opposed to the other competitors environmental footprint and
then you come up, you can market your product if its comes out to be a better in terms of
the environmental footprint as opposed to your competitor. So, some of their, some of the
client tell whichever which things green likes to have more green product will be
attracted towards your product. So, that could be another goal.

So, let us we have to be in terms of like in terms of the methodology that we look at this
in the goal and scope definition we need to have a very clear cut idea what is the purpose
of doing this LCA and who the audience is, because based on this what is the purpose
and who is the audience we will define our life cycle assessment exercise to come up
with the information which can be used by those particular audience, which you will see
in the examples it will make you much clearer.

So, once you have the goal and the scope definition, the next thing is within that we will
talk about some more function and functional unit and all that, but one of the more, the
most critical aspect is this inventory analysis, this is the most critical part of doing a life
cycle analysis because this inventory analysis is all data data data you need to have lots
and lots of data. And thankfully these once this LCA concept started we have now
databases out there, some data bases are available for free some databases you need to
pay, but it is there are databases available which you can use for finding the data. Again
since as you will see in any environmental scenario around whenever the environmental
initiative has been taken most of the time this initiative say started with western
European countries, LCA exercises not different, LCA exercise did start from the western
European countries. So, we have most of the good establish databases actually comes
from western European country, but nonetheless there is a effort being made by different
companies Eco invent is one company which is very popular in terms of the data bases
and right now actually we are working on a project with Eco invent to develop some data
bases for the Indian contest.
So, here again they Eco invent is trying to get some data for the Indian context or South
Asian area, Southeast Asia, South Asia different they are looking at around the world and
they are trying to develop some data bases which can be incorporated. So, inventory
analysis is the data data data. So, before you go to the data one thing is that you need to
find out what is the function and the functional unit. So, function means for any product
when you are trying to because we are trying to calculate the environmental footprint of
a product and the product has a certain funds.

Many times it gets very difficult to compare the two products for example, if you look at
an E reader versus the regular book. Our regular book, both in regular book also you can
read you can read a novel you can read a novel on your Amazon kindle, you can read a
novel on your I pad or you can read a novel on your any like a small like a tablet. E
reader, but how to compare them? If you want to compare reading on a E reader versus a
book it is very difficult to compare all the function for both of them is to read, is to read a
book, but and we will talk about that how to make those kind of composites in this in the
subsequent module. It gets tricky; it gets tricky even for such a simple stuff. So, that is.
So, what we need to assume a function.

Say for example, you are trying to look at a two different types of writing you look a
regular a fountain pen, ink pens verses this kind of pen which is your led pen and even
some of these mechanical pencils versus your regular pencil, mechanical pencil comes
with a spring. So, there are different both of them the function is to write, but how to like
a how to quantify. So, what is the functional unit what is the how much should be the
functional unit. So, based on your funds and the functional unit we decide on in terms of
the data collection.

Then where the boundaries will be, where we will keep our boundary what would be the
system boundary and I will give you a examples of that where we will kind of can find
our study and what data do you need based on your system on do you need to find out
what kind of data is required, what kind of data is required and what assumptions are you
making. Because when you go for the data collection you our industrial processes are not
design in a way to for us to do LCA exercise. Say if you want to get the data for
example, if you want to go to a power plant and you want to find out there are say n
number of unit processes going on.

So, for each of the unit processes you want to find out the material input, the energy
input and the output emissions coming out some of the data you may have it, but for
some of the data they may not have metre all the after each of the unit processes, say if
they do not of the metre after each unit processes you do not know how much energy is
being consumed at each of the individual unit process. You may get it for a combination
of certain unit processes or for the whole plant, but for the individual unit process is very
difficult to get because they are not design in a way for us to have to collect data. So, that
sometimes we go and collect data we try to have a additional measurements to collect the
data other there are ways to make an assumption, ways to calculate certain things and
that we will talk about that as well.

So, there will be certain assumption that you have to make because unfortunately that is
how the situation will be and then there will be certain limitations because you may not
always have all the data. Some of the data could be based on the theoretical values. So,
you may have to use theoretical calculations to come up with some date.

So, that is how the inventory analysis is done. So, inventory analysis is as I said is one of
the most critical part in terms of your LCA ones I this is the most time consuming stuff.
So, LCI in terms of the data is what we get it from the databases, but we need to make
sure we knew we use the current database. So, once you have the database once you have
the LCI data then the last two bullets if you go back and look at that it said one is the
impact assessment. So, what are the environmental social and economic effects that we
see, we will talk mostly about environmental and we will not we will touch social and
economic a little bit, but what are the environmental effects. So, there are different
criteria we look at in terms of the environmental emissions that is having the effect and
then we have to interpret what are the interpretation, how to reduce the environmental
impact, but is the. So, if our goal is to reduce environmental impact how to do that, what
conclusions can you draw from this study what did we learn from this particular study
what recommendations can be made.

So, those are in terms of different like a stuff that is used. So, again in terms of this
particular slide gives you a very brief overview of the like a how the LCA is done as per
the ISO methodology we need these are the four steps, goal and scope, inventory
analysis, impact assessment and interpretation. And we will come to these one of all of
this in detail as we look at several examples in starting in the next module.

So, in this slide, in this particular module if you remember what did we cover we looked
at how the environmental like how the LCA is performed. So, we started with a very
brief overview of the basic sustainability parameter we has kind of a recap of what we
covered in the first week, a quick recap of that and then we started looking into what is
an LCA. We described in great detail the product life cycle stages. So, again I will have
already said many times, but I will say it one more time, make sure you understand that
particular slide which is the slide just before it. You make a good understanding of this
particular slide because this is a very critical slide for our when we go into the next
modules and next week because this is if you have understanding of this the others will
become easier for you to understand because we will be referring to this life cycle we
will again be saying product life cycle product life cycle. So, you should have a good
understanding of what a product life cycle is all about.

So, with that let us close this module and then from the next module we will kind of a
start with an example of when we try to compare certain products for LCA and how we
go about that, what are the steps, how we do this resource acquisition, how we collect
this LCI data and what are the interpreters, what is the impact assessment mean, what are
those environmental impact we are talking about and what how we can interpret the
values. So, again thank you for watching this video and keep watching and I hope you
will learn some good stuff from this course.

Thank you.