Life cycle assessment and recycling

What are life cycle assessments (LCAs) are carried out to assess?

The environmental impact of products in each of these stages:

• Extracting and processing raw materials.

• Manufacturing and packaging.

• Use and operation during its lifetime.

• Disposal at the end of its useful life, including transport and distribution at each stage.

What can be easily quantified?

Use of water, resources, energy sources and production of some wastes. Allocating numerical values to pollutant effects is less straightforward and requires value judgements, so LCA is not a purely objective process.

What can selective or abbreviated LCAs can be devised to evaluate?

A product but these can be misused to reach pre-determined conclusions, eg in support of claims for advertising purposes.

What does the reduction in use, reuse and recycling of materials by end users reduce?

The use of limited resources, use of energy sources, waste and environmental impacts.

What are metals, glass, building materials, clay ceramics and most plastics produced from?

Limited raw materials. Much of the energy for the processes comes from limited resources. Obtaining raw materials from the Earth by quarrying and mining causes environmental impacts.

What is a product that can be reused?

Some products, such as glass bottles, can be reused. Glass bottles can be crushed and melted to make different glass products. Other products cannot be reused and so are recycled for a different use.

How can metals be recycled?

By melting and recasting or reforming into different products. The amount of separation required for recycling depends on the material and the properties required of the final product. For example, some scrap steel can be added to iron from a blast furnace to reduce the amount of iron that needs to be extracted from iron ore.