Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to look at the environmental impact of a product for its entire life cycle, from design to disposal.

It considers the environmental effects associated with each stage of industrial processing looking at the water, energy, or materials used as well as the waste products produced.

Resources

The lesson plans below contain activities and fact sheets to guide learning

Lesson plan 1:

introduces stages of lca using common household items

age

13-16

Lesson plan 2:

compares the lca of different building materials

age

13-16

LINK to CURRICULUM

Did you know?

The uk has around 22,000 landfill sites

Each year up to 95% of worldwide municipal solid waste ends up in landfill

Landfills release greenhouse gases and toxic leachate

LCA is a tool used in the growing field of industrial ecology

LCA studies originated in the 1970s

The Coca-Cola Company completed one of the first LCA studies in 1969