LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS
A.S. Ramakrishna

With growing concern about environmental impacts associated with rapid industrialisation, a number of environmental assessment tools have been developed.  Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is one such tool which has been used for more than 25 years in the developed countries and has recently made inroads into the developing countries.

LCA evaluates the environmental burdens associated with a particular product by taking into account the entire life cycle of the product, beginning from raw material acquisition, processing, manufacturing and consumption to final disposal and reuse.  The environmental inputs and outputs are identified for every stage and summed up to find the total impact associated with a product.

LCA is carried out in three stages beginning with the preparation of a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) which requires quantification in physical units of all the environmental inputs that go into making a product, such as energy, raw material and so on.  This is followed by Impact Analysis which converts the physical units into impacts on environment, human health etc.  Based on this analysis, LCA enters into the stage of Improvement Analysis where it suggests changes or improvements in the different activities during the life cycle of a product.  In other words, the aim of LCA is to quantify the environmental impacts during each stage of a product manufacture and suggest changes to mitigate the adverse impacts.

The tools holds great potential for use in polluting industries like soaps detergents and dyes and those dealing with recycled products like plastic, glass and metals.  At the same time, it can be used by any industry to streamline its upstreams and downstream processes.

LCA studies can also be used to guide consumers to make better purchasing decisions and, to manufacturers for developing products that make less demands on the environment.  Finally, LCA can be used by government for ‘eco-labelling’ of products and services.

At Development Alternatives, a beginning has been made by using the LCA for estimating the energy input and output for the construction sector in India.  The ultimate aim to suggest interventions - technological and institutional - which have  a high impact in terms of energy input reduction per unit of service provided.

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