[ Back ] [ Home ] [ Up ] [ Next ] Sustainability Indicators and LCA Cooper, J.S., “Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainable Development Indicators,” Journal of Industrial Ecology, 7, 12-15 (2003) As LCA techniques grow in sophistication, LCA can be used to evaluate the potential contribution of a product’s life cycle to many different environmental impacts. As interest in the environmental community shifts from strictly environmental concerns to the broader category of sustainable development, the question naturally arises of how LCA might be applied to this wider set of goals. We do not now and probably never should have a universally agreed upon set of impacts to be assessed by LCA. An opportunity exists to use LCA to assess impact indicators of national interest, as opposed to the set of indicators currently used, which are chosen, at least in part, because characterization methods are available in the LCA literature. Products well suited for such an analysis are those whose life cycles create substantial demand from consumers of large quantities of materials or energy and significant quantities of materials in short supply, emitters of large quantities of waste and significant quantities of particularly dangerous wastes, and users of broad or critical land areas. Examples include major transportation, power generation, agricultural, construction, and electronic products. For more information, contact Associate Professor Joyce Smith Cooper at cooper@me.washington.edu