LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT: MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR DECISION-MAKING

www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br
http://www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br/en/articles.asp?ed=1&cod_artigo=19
©Copyright, 2006. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the articles, either in full or in part, is allowed, provided the obligation to indicate
INTERFACEHS` ownership of the copyright of the same is observed, with full mention of the source of such articles. If in doubt, contact the
secretarial department: interfacehs@interfacehs.com.br
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT: MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR
DECISION-MAKING
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo1; Luiz Alexandre Kulay2
1SENAC University Center Professor and IPEN/CNEN-SP Researcher; 2SENAC University Center Professor
and GP2 Pollution Prevention Researcher at EPUSP.
ABSTRACT
Given societal awareness that usage of manufactured goods and services adversely
impacts the supply of natural resources and the environment, the consumer market began
to firmly question the developmentalist economic model typically used by enterprises in the
1970s. Questions emerged regarding its validity as a definitive solution in the quest to
satisfy consumer demand. In this scenario, many corporations found themselves forced to
make changes to their environmental policies in order to reduce the negative impacts of
their activities. Due to this societal pressure, company actions aimed to guarantee market
share, rather than broaden the scope of business activities. Initially, only reactive
environmental control measures were adopted, aiming solely to reduce adverse
environmental effects caused by humankind. In realizing that this approach would not
legitimately guarantee Sustainable Development, modern society began to pursue new
and more auspicious practices, this time more pro-active in their nature, to reach or at
least address, the conditions posed by this paradigm. This notion prompted the
emergence of concepts such Environmental Management and Pollution Prevention along
with concepts, techniques, and methodological procedures conducive to an appropriate
modern environmental stance for the current reality. The technique of Life Cycle
Assessment – LCA must be underscored in the context of the broad nature of the
approach, systematic in its essence, and the deepening degree of interactions between
human systems and the environment. The objective of this paper is to discuss the intrinsic
elements, technical content, applications and limitations of the LCA, as well as its
application in Environmental Management and Pollution Prevention scenarios.
Key words: Life Cycle Assessment; LCA; Environmental Management; Pollution
Prevention; Environment
1

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
INTRODUCTION
Society’s stance regarding the importance of preserving the environment has
impacted the activities of productive sectors in this regard over the last four decades. In
the early 1960s, newfound societal awareness that consumption of manufactured goods
and services were adversely impacting the supply of natural resources and the
environment, the consumer market began to firmly question the developmentalist model
and its validity as a definitive solution in the quest to satisfy the modern man’s consumer
demands.
For this reason, the business community was obliged to make successive
alterations to its conduct with regard to reducing the adverse environmental impacts
caused by its activities; these actions aimed primarily to guarantee market share, rather
than garnering new market niches.
In the first phase, as was characteristic of the 1970s, companies opted to take a
reactive stance to environmental issues, implementing environmental control measures.
This phase was marked by the action of the State, which took on the role of inspector,
regulating the activities of organizations to limit their environmental impact.
The notion that preserving the environment could reduce operating expenditures
led corporations to an evolution in their management policies. In this manner, by the
second half of the 1980s, one witnessed a shift to a pro-active stance against
environmental issues, characterized by the implementation of prevention measures. In
other words, instead of treating industrial waste solely to comply with legal standards,
industries began to focus on reducing waste or finding different ways to reuse waste to
lessen environmental impacts. This perspective created a particularly advantageous
scenario for implementation of techniques, such as Environmental Impact Studies,
Environmental Management Systems, Pollution Prevention Programs, Environmental Risk
Assessments, among other.
The perception that the use of control and prevention actions in the productive
chain of a given product was necessary, but not enough to perpetuate sustainable
development, induced a reorientation in the manner in which environmental programs
2
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
should be conducted, fundamentally in post-production phases. In this scenario, Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) emerged as a systemic tool with a view to filling this void, as well as
aiding in the decision-making process for administrators.
Given these considerations, the objective of this paper is to present the importance
of the above-mentioned methodology in the context of environmental management and
pollution prevention.
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
The implementation of control and prevention measures has constituted a decisive
factor for an increase in the environmental performance of organizations, and as a result
by bi-reciprocal correlation, improved environmental conditions for the planet manifested in
the form of a deceleration in the degradation thereof.
Nevertheless, these actions are usually referred to as focus on the process due to
the fact that their approach normally only ponders the limits of an organization’s battery of
individual units. (SILVA, 2003)
Society’s reflection on this preventative stance raised consciousness of aspects
pertaining to sustainable development. Material and energetic waste are generated from
the consumption and transformation of natural resources into goods and services.
Therefore, preventing waste does not mean solely reducing pollution levels – defined as
emptying waste generated by humankind into the environment – but also minimizing
material and energetic resource use. Furthermore, if one considers that waste treatment
and disposal implies costs for any organization, reducing losses in the productive process
translates into savings, which, from the point of view of economic balance, could be
understood as increasing profit.
The evolution of this line of thought became, however, increasingly more evident,
to the extent that even the preventative approach to environmental issues lacked an ample
framework to meet to society’s needs regarding sustainable development. This was so
much so that the globalization phenomenon has called for an approach that can effectively
3
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
broaden the focus beyond the limits of each organization’s units. This is perhaps the origin
of “Life Cycle Thinking” (LCT) (SONNEMAN, 2002).
According to Sonneman (ibid.), LCT can be understood as the awareness that the
good environmental performance of an isolated productive chain is not sufficient to
guarantee the sustainability thereof; this condition can only be attained if all links in this
chain present appropriate environmental performance. In this context, emphasizing that
the assessment of a product, process or service’s environmental performance is not solely
based on waste disposal, but also consumption of natural resources, is never excessive.
Silva and Kulay (2003) proclaimed that the LCT, as an evaluation of environmental
performance, should be conducted systemically, covering all activities involved in
manufacturing a product that can potentially impact the environment. Therefore, all these
activities throughout the productive chain, from the attainment of natural resources to
manufacture of the product, are subject to this approach. This scope of application is
denominated as focus on the product.
Critical observation of production models leads one to determine that the
manufacture of any product is not in itself an end, but a means to meet the society’s
necessities or desires; or rather, products are manufactured to perform a function. This
implies that its potential impact on the environment is exhausted at the end of the
productive chain. On the contrary: the path to fulfillment of its function; the activity in itself;
its destination after its function is exhausted – its final disposal in the environment, or
recycling – are activities that could equally impose significant environmental impacts.
An assessment of the environmental burden resulting from the satisfaction of a
certain human need via the manufacture of a product will be discerning and consistent
only if all stages of the life cycle of this good are considered; this is obtained through
application of a focus on the exercise of the product function analysis approach (SILVA,
2003).
As such, the life cycle concept can be understood as a set of necessary steps for a
product to perform its function, including the attainment of natural resources and its final
disposal, soon after it has exhausted its function. Therefore, activities like manufacture,
4
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
distribution, usage, and the post-usage recycling of the product are considered within this
spectrum (VIGON, 1993).
Figure 1 presents the five stages that generally constitute the life cycle of any
product.
Figure 1 – Stages of the life cycle of products
Extraction
Final
of
Manufacture
use
Disposal
resources
Transport
Source: Adapted from Fava (1991).
Observation: Transport is considered a stage of the life cycle because it is an
activity that can potentially impact the environment and permeates practically the entire life
cycle of products.
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT CONCEPT
With the life cycle concept consolidated, it is possible to conceptualize the Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a technique to evaluate the environmental performance of a
product throughout its life cycle. This assessment is conducted both by identifying all
interactions occurring during the life cycle of product and environment, as well as by the
evaluation of the environmental impacts potentially associated with these interactions.
(CURRAN, 1996)
5
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
The first analyses focused on the environmental question date back to the
mid-1960s, when many large corporations, preoccupied with reducing their operating
costs, decided to conduct an inventory of energy costs pertaining to the manufacture of
their products.
One of the most notable examples of this group of initiatives is the study conducted
by Franklin & Associates in 1969 at the request of Coca-Cola Co. The study included
consumption of raw materials and energy in the manufacturing processes for packaging
used for company products. (FABI et al., 2004).
The compilation of works conducted with this focus, known at the time Resource
Environmental Profile Analysis (Repa), years later provided the necessary theoretical
basis for the conceptualization of LCA.
The Repa reports played an important role during the first oil crisis. This is
because, as Christiansen (1996) notes, at the request of the governments of several
industrialized nations between the years 1973 and 1975 detailed studies were conducted
assessing the planet’s energetic potential, including not only a situational analysis of the
problem, but also alternative proposals to the use of fossil fuels.
The great diversity of standards and criteria for application of the methodology,
coupled with the lack of a broad and reliable data base and the elevated costs involved in
producing such studies, resulted, however in the manipulation of the results obtained in
many cases. For this reason, this type of study ended up being discredited in the scientific
community, which was followed by its consequent, albeit temporary, abandonment thereof.
The certainty that usage of a focus on the exercise of the product function
approach would be the best manner to evaluate the interaction between a product and the
environment throughout its life cycle led many research centers to continue investing time
and resources to perfect deficient aspects of the technique in order to make it an
executable and reliable procedure. The LCA is the result of the progress of these efforts.
6
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
Although the Life Cycle Assessment is still in the final phases of evolution in terms
of some of its parts, interest in the method has increased for its varied uses. Within the
institutions dedicated to perfecting and divulging this methodology, the Society of
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (Setac) deserves special attention for the role it
has played. In the opinion of many users, this institution – which for over a decade has
concentrated its efforts on consolidating a uniform and consistent conceptual base -
currently constitutes the most respected forum for discussion on many aspects correlated
to the methodology worldwide.
As a result of the LCA’s importance in the context of Environmental Management
and Pollution Prevention, the structural methodology that it constitutes was standardized
by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), respectively as 14040 of the
ISO 14000 series. The following technical norms in this collection had been launched by
2005:
ISO 14040: Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Principles
and framework (1997)
ISO 14041: Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment - Goal and
scope definition and inventory analysis (1998)
ISO 14042: Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Life cycle
impact assessment (2000)
ISO 14043: Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Life cycle
interpretation (2000)
More recently, in 2002, the Life Cycle Initiative (LCI) was created through a
partnership between the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and Setac.
Among its many objectives, the LCI aims to use the LCA in three global programs. The
first of these programs is called Life Cycle Inventory and is dedicated to the development
of methodology to produce environmental inventories (REBITZER, et al., 2004).
The second program established by the LCI, so-called Life Cycle Impact
Assessment, is dedicated to consolidating the Impact Assessment stage that is part of
almost all LCA studies. The trilogy is completed by the Life Cycle Management program
which aims to stimulate the aggregation of a life cycle perspective to all actions inherent to
7
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
business management with a view to obtaining increased environmental efficiency for
products and services.
Trajectory of the LCA in Brazil
The history of the LCA in Brazil began in 1993 with the creation of the
Standardization Support Group (Grupo de Apoio à Normalização - GANA), a
subcommittee dedicated specifically to the theme under the coordination of Hubmaier
Andrade, Cícero Dias , and José Ribamar Chehebe, three environmentalists that had ties
both with academia as well as the business world. In the last five years these efforts have
begun to bear fruit. The first specialized publication on the matter was Analysis of the Life
Cycle of Products: ISO 14000 Management Tools (Análise de Ciclo de Vida de Produtos:
Ferramenta Gerencial da ISO 14000), which was written by José Ribamar Chehebe
(1997).
The year of 1998 witnessed another milestone for the LCA in Brazil with the
emergence of the Pollution Prevention Group (Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição - GP2),
from the São Paulo University’s Polytechnic School (Escola Politécnica da Universidade
de São Paulo). Created with the objective of generating knowledge and developing
competencies in the fields of pollution prevention and environmental management, the
GP2 decided to make studying LCA its main line of research. This research, which is
conducted by Professor Gil Anderi da Silva, has become an intellectual production that by
the second half of 2005 had spawned six master’s dissertations, one doctoral thesis, and
more than forty articles in periodicals and congressional records both nationally and
internationally (KULAY, 2004).
In the second half of 1998, Gana ended its activities and was substituted by the
Brazilian Environmental Management Committee, known as CB-38, of the Brazilian
Technical Norms Association (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas - ABNT). Due
to this fact, this entity also began to manage LCA projects, now under the superintendence
of Dr. Haroldo Mattos de Lemos. In general terms, the CB-38 is dedicated to organizing
Brazil’s contribution – manifested in the form of suggestions and investments from
institutions of the most diverse levels and segments – to formulate norms for the ISO
14000 series linked to environmental management, environmental inspection,
8
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
environmental labeling, environmental performance assessment, life cycle assessment,
and terminology.
Operating with a structure similar to that of the ISO TC207, the CB-38 has a
permanent forum for discussions on Brazilians standards for Life Cycle Assessment under
its subcommittee SC-05. This subcommittee’s first product dates back to 2001 with the
nationwide launch of the “NBR ISO 14040: Environmental Management –Life Cycle
Assessment – Principles and Structure (NBR ISO 14040: Gestão Ambiental – Avaliação
do ciclo de vida – Princípios e estrutura) standard. Recently in 2005, it also released the
NBR ISO 14041: Environmental Management –Life Cycle Assessment Definition of Goals
and Scope and Inventory Analysis (NBR ISO 14041: Gestão Ambiental – Avaliação do
ciclo de vida – Definição de objetivos e escopo e Análise de Inventário).
The newest of work fronts for diffusion of the LCA was established in 2002 with the
creation of the Brazilian Life Cycle Association (Associação Brasileira de Ciclo de Vida –
ABCV). Open to manifestations from diverse segments of society, this institution’s mission
is build a national data base for LCA studies and promote capacity-building for a critical
mass of individuals to put LCA into practice and maintain ties with the international
community involved with the theme (KULAY, 2004).
The decision to create the ABCV began with discussion within the business sector,
academia and the government to gauge investments for diffusion of LCA in Brazil.
Although budgeted at lofty values, the consensus among founders of the entity was and
continues to be that any outlays aimed at making LCA a well-known, reliable, and
consistent technique will afford greater comprehension and planning of production
systems and procedures, thus promoting an increase in productivity and guaranteeing that
Brazilian companies will obtain environmental certification and seals that will ensure the
entry of their products into the markets of industrialized nations.
The Brazilian LCA Project
To undertake the initiatives it has proposed, the ABCV has decided to develop the
Brazilian LCA Project (Projeto Brasileiro de ACV) which is centered on two programs:
9
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---

Life Cycle Assessment: Management Tool For Decision-Making
Emilia Satoshi Miyamaru Seo; Luiz Alexandre Kulay
INTERFACEHS
training in LCA competencies and building up the Brazilian Data Base for LCA studies
conducted in and for the country (KULAY, 2004).
The LCA competency training program is in the most general sense the
implementation of diverse actions in higher education (graduate and post-graduate
degrees), for which it will propose the inclusion of the Life Cycle Thinking approach into
the curriculums of pertinent disciplines.
In reference to specific training of LCA specialists and users, plans include:
• fostering the constant development of the LCA in post-graduate programs with
the objective of training specialists that will, in turn, act as multipliers in the diffusion of this
knowledge;
• creating specific disciplines based on LCA in professionalization courses;
• stimulating the participation of academic and non-academic professionals in short
and medium duration training programs outside Brazil.
The Brazilian Data Base to aid in the development of LCA studies should, for its
part, be conceived to safeguard aspects of transparency and consistency. Furthermore,
operationally the framework and format should allow for the incorporation of any computer
program to support LCA studies (SILVA, 2003).
For these objectives to be reached, this part of the program was structured
according to the following phases of execution:
Preparatory Stage
•
Identifying people and companies in Brazil that are in any way interested in
the LCA in order to establish training levels.
•
Holding a workshop in conjunction with international entities linked LCA –
like como Setac, Life Cycle Initiative, Unep, developers of data bases and specialized
computer programs for LCA – to subsidize the definition of parameters and criteria to be
used in building a national data base.
•
Development of a sub-project for operating the data bases.
10
INTERFACEHS - A Journal on Integrated Management of Occupational Health and the Environment - v.1, n.1, Art 4, ago 2006
www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br

---