Building a library of consumer product LCA for enhancing sustainable consumer behavior

초록

With growing concerns about environmental problems, reducing the adverse environmental impact of consumer products is emerging as a great challenge. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is an essential tool in addressing the challenge. By examining all phases of product life cycle (i.e., production, usage, and end-of-life treatment), LCA quantifies how much environmental impact is caused by a product and how different lifecycle phases contribute to the total impact. This paper focuses on the fact that although many LCA studies are available, LCA results are too scattered in different publications, which impedes their use in enhancing sustainable consumer behavior. With an aim to help understand the environmental implications of consumer behavior and identify ways to enhance its sustainability, this paper proposes building a library of consumer product LCA. The library collects and compiles LCA data from a variety of public sources. The initial version of the library that encompasses more than 12 LCA results on 30 different types of consumer products is presented, and its potential applications are discussed. © 2015 ICIC International.

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