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
Did you know?
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The uk has around 22,000 landfill sites
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Each year up to 95% of worldwide municipal solid waste ends up in landfill
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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