The Usefulness of an Actor’s Perspective in LCA

Abstract

This paper is an argumentation for adding an actor's perspective to lifecycle assessment (LCA). The need for this perspective stem from a criticism about the usefulness of LCA interpretation methods comparing the relative contribution of life-cycle phases of a product. Our argumentation is based on four previously published studies providing practical examples of how value chain actors' influence may be considered in an LCA and the benefit of doing so. Manufacturing sector examples show how one company's influence can be illustrated in results and how it may relate all relevant emissions to its own processes. The food sector study shows how to assess several value chain actors' individual improvement potential. The final example, taken from building sector, explore how to consider the fact that actors in one part of the value chain can influence other actors to improve. 1 Problem and solution Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that illustrates the entire life cycle of products and services and quantify their environmental impacts. A frequently asked question in LCAs is "which part of the life cycle contribute the most to the environmental burden of a product/ service?" and the most common method used is the dominance analysis. A dominant use phase contribution to global warming is found in most products consuming energy during product application like cars, computers, and light bulbs. In the case of animal food products, such as milk and yogurt, the agricultural processes usually dominate the life-cycle environmental impact. These are typical examples of how one can learn and pinpoint so called hotspots in the product life cycle when using LCA.

Assessing the ecological soundness of organic and conventional agriculture by means of life cycle assessment (LCA)

“…More information on the LCA methodology can be found in Heijungs et al (1992a, b), Consoli et al (1993), Lindfors et al (1995), van den Berg et al (1995), Guinée et al (2001), Baumann and Tillman (2002) and Rebitzer et al (2004).…”

A sociomaterial conceptualization of flows in industrial ecology

“…Our approach is designed both for documenting implicit actors in flow models, and for revealing nonintuitive connections. The approach is based on the presented extended terminology for flows and humans, on the presented constructivist sociomaterialism, and on explorative case studies (cf., Baumann et al., 2015). From the case studies, we found it useful to outline concepts (Sections 5.1 and 5.2) and a procedure (Section 5.3).…”

The Responsible Fashion System: a Re-Conceptualization of the Role of Fashion Design

“…To help address the many challenges that arise during product development, many designers use guidelines, checklists and analytical tools. However, the use and application of eco-design tools, methods and techniques by small sized firms is limited (Baumann et al, 2011;Knight & Jenkins, 2009). Almost none of the interviewed design entrepreneurs used tools, such as Ted's Ten (Textile Environment Design, 2006), the Nike Maker App (Centre for Sustainable Fashion, 2013), or the Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higg Index (Sustainable Apparel Coalition, 2017), and the majority were not aware of these tools.…”