Life Cycle Assessment Toolbox for Determining Sustainable Engineering Strategies

Global Perspective

Overconsumption and Overpopulation:
- Overconsumption is prevalent in developed nations.
- Overpopulation is a significant issue in developing nations.

Engineers Australia’s Sustainability Policy

Resource Use:
- Resource usage should not exceed regeneration limits.
- Non-renewable resource use should create lasting value and be limited to situations where renewable substitutes are impractical.
Engineering Design:
- Design should be based on a whole-system approach.
- Product and project design should prioritize longevity, component reuse, repair, and recyclability.
Waste Elimination:
- Eliminating waste should be a primary design consideration, such as through industrial symbiosis.
Environmental Release:
- The rate of substance release into the environment should not cause net harm and should be within the environment's capacity to absorb or assimilate them.
Solutions:
- Proactive and integrated solutions are preferable to reactive, linear, end-of-pipe solutions.
Precautionary Principle:
- Apply the precautionary principle and risk management practices to prevent irreversible negative consequences.

Sustainable Engineering and Sustainable Technology

Engineering Context of Sustainability:
- Involves designing and managing sustainable technology.
- Includes research on environmental and social impacts and limitations.
- Requires living within global limitations.
- Emphasizes managing resources from cradle to cradle.
Role of Engineers:
- Engineers practically develop and implement sustainability.
- They are key in making sustainability happen.
Sustainability Concepts in Engineering:
1. Design:
  - Optimized processes, structures, mechanical elements, and chemical reactions.
2. Operation:
  - Risk management, cleaner production strategies, and social considerations.
3. Maintenance:
  - Risk management, cleaner production, and good housekeeping.
4. After Use Stage:
  - Recycling and decommissioning strategies.

Quantifying Sustainability Using Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Analysis

TBL includes ecological, economical, and social factors.

TBL Indicators

Indicators
- Indicators are helpful tools in decision-making.
- Indicators are the critical points of a system that should be monitored, measured, and analyzed.
- Help identify weak links between economy, environment, and society, revealing problem areas and guiding solutions.
Types of Indicators:
- Tangible indicators:
  - Can be measured and stated in terms of numbers.
- Intangible indicators:
  - Not measurable but can be felt and influence the system.
Use of Indicators:
- Used to assess progress or performance of suitability in a system.
Requirements for Tangible Indicators:
- Any tangible indicator must have a numerator and a denominator.
Data needed:
- Both primary and secondary data are needed
TBL Examples
- Ecological: Rate of material flow, energy use, per capita GHG emissions, land degradation, water and air pollution.
- Economical: Percentage of income for basic needs, income distribution, employment by top companies.
- Social: Number of lung cancer patients reduced, school dropouts, access to basic services, life expectancies, age structure.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for Quantifying TBL Indicators

Application of Life Cycle Assessment for sustainability assessment Measuring TBL
- Environmental life cycle assessment – environmental indicators
- Life cycle costing – economic indicators
- Social life cycle assessment – social indicators
Definition of LCA:
- "Compilation and evaluation of the inputs and outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle”
Benefits of LCA:
- Identifies the impacts of a product at all stages of its life cycle.
- Enables evaluation of those impacts for comparative or improvement purposes.

Product or Service Life Cycle Stages

Sourcing:
- Obtaining raw materials from natural sources (e.g., vegetables, ores, crude oil).
Manufacture:
- Transforming raw materials into the product and packaging.
Distribution:
- Moving products from production facilities to retailers.
Use:
- Consumption of products.
Recovery:
- Collecting, sorting, and recycling waste products.
Transport:
- Moving goods throughout the life cycle (e.g., truck, rail, ship, aircraft) at all stages.

Application of LCA

LCA is a decision-making tool (cradle-to-cradle).
Can help improve:
- Products: New design.
- Processes: New/different technology.
- Policies: Labeling, taxation, etc.
- Market strategy: Niche market targeting.
- Supply chain management: Exerting up- and down-stream pressure.
- Information collection and dissemination: Public debate, consumer information.

Why Does LCA Make You a Critical Thinker?

Study ETH-Zurich: Comparison MacDonald’s -Silberkügel
Popcorn VS Polystyrene – Which is Better?
- PS: Non renewable material + non biodegradable
- Pop-corn: Renewable material + biodegradable
- Go beyond "a priori": What is the key parameter from environmental point of view ?

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA)

Environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) for quantifying environmental indicators
4 steps of ELCA framework as per ISO 14040-44 (2006) for estimation and assessment of the environmental impacts

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment – Method

Step 1: Goal and Scope Definition
- The goal offers decision-making strategies to stakeholders in the environmental supply chain of a product or service.
- The scope defines the depth and breadth, including details of the study to address the goal.
- Choose:
  - Functional Unit: Main function performed by product
    - Quantitative basis for comparison with other products that (can) perform the same function
  - System Boundaries:
    - Completeness of the assessment
  - Requirements for Inventory:
    - Data quality for assessment
Goal Example: Determine main environmental impacts of the cup & life cycle stages where they occur

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment – Method (Cont.)

Step 2: Inventory Analysis
- Defining the Life Cycle:
  - All upstream processes (from materials extraction to delivery at factory).
  - All downstream processes (from factory dispatch to disposal of product).
  - Include transportation processes.
- Calculation Rules:
  - Inventory of all inputs/outputs per process.
  - Summation of inputs/outputs by type/substance for each life cycle stage.
  - Summation of input/output by type/substance for all life cycle stages.

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment – Method (Cont.)

Step 3: Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)
- Steps to Calculate Impacts
  - Classification
    - Assign the input & output data from LCI to selected impact categories
    - $CO_2 \rightarrow global warming$
    - NO_2 \rightarrow acidification, nutrification & human toxicity
    - $Hg \rightarrow ecotoxicity \rightarrow human toxicity$
  - Characterization
    - Within each impact category convert contributing inputs & outputs into category indicator results
    - Multiply flow with characterization factors
  - Normalization
    - Relate product’s category result to total category result for respective category indicator caused by e.g.
    - All the activities in a country during a certain period, total industrial consumption, total emission in a region
  - Weighting
    - Aggregate different category results into scorecard or single indicator (eco-point) to take account of relative importance of different category results
    - Distance to target, no significant adverse effect level, expert panel, eco-indicator

Impact Assessment procedure

Imagine an inventory with only two emissions 3kg $CH4$ and 2kg $CO2$
- Photochemical smog, Greenhouse
- Greenhouse $CH4=21, CO2=1$ Smog - $CH_4=0.006$
- Australian greenhouse issue determined to be 3 times more important than smog.
- Therefore greenhouse = 0.1%3 = 0.3 Eco-units and Smog =2%1=2 Eco-units
- Total impact =2.3 Eco-units
- For emission of 3kg $CH4$ and 2kg $CO2$
 - $CH4(321)+CO2(21)=65kg CO_2eq$
 - Smog =0.018 kgC2H2eq
- Greenhouse = 65kg $CO_2$ eq. Smog= 18mg C2H2eq
- Total greenhouse in Australia 65000kg and smog 0.9kg per capita per annum
- Greenhouse = 0.1% per capita emissions, Smog= 2% per capita emissions

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment – Method (Cont.)

Step 4: Interpretation
- LCA results are reported in the most possible informative way, and the need and opportunities to reduce the impact of a product or service are systematically evaluated
- The outcome is useful for making environmentally friendly decisions

Case Study – Desalination plant

Life cycle GHG emissions can be reduced from 3,890 tonnes $CO2$ -e to 367 tonnes $CO2$ -e if 100% of the total electricity comes from wind turbines.

Case Study - Biodiesel

Calculate the life cycle global warming potential of the combustion of 1 GJ of biodiesel produced from canola oil manufactured in south-western Australia
LCA SCOPE: Three stages
- Pre-farm: emissions from production and transportation of inputs. e.g. fertiliser, pesticides and diesel
- On-farm: farm machinery operations, $N_2O$ emissions from N-fertiliser application
- Post-farm: emissions from conversion of canola seed to canola oil, canola oil to biodiesel, combustion of biodiesel

Case Study - Biodiesel (Cont.)

GHG EMISSIONS FROM BIODIESEL PRODUCTION & COMBUSTION
- International $N2O$ default value (1.0%) VS Local’ $N2O$ value
GHG Emissions: Biodiesel vs. Diesel

Monte Carlo Simulation

The contribution of RCR to GHG mitigation has thus ignored

Life Cycle Costing (LCC)

Economic factors are important for the decision-making strategy
Process of identifying and documenting all the costs involved over the life of a product or service is known as life-cycle costing (LCC)
A LCC analysis is based on the estimation and valuation of uncertain future events and outcomes; hence, subjective factors are involved in the process and will affect the results
LCC tool is an effective technique for forecasting and evaluating the cost performance of a product or service
LCC approach helps compare capital cost with operating cost for competing design options and to find an optimized option
LCC allows a better resource management due to long term cost visibility and identification of high cost functional stages and provides improvement opportunities
- Defining alternative strategies to be evaluated
- Identifying relevant economic criteria
- Obtaining and grouping of significant costs
- Performing a risk assessment

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) – Cont.

LCC is an economic cousin of LCA and if combined with LCA, it can help in achieving the optimal or cost-effective environmental solutions or eco-efficient options
The time value of money is expressed as a discount rate which depends upon capital cost, inflation, and social behaviour
After considering the inflation rate and discount factor, the present value of any future cost of a product or service can be expressed using following equation
- $C = \sum_{i=0}^{n} \frac{C}{(1 + IR)^i} \times (1 + DR)$
- i : 0, 1, 2, ….., n; year value till end of life of the product or service
- C : Present cost ($)
- IR : Inflation rate (%)
- DR : Discount rate (%)
Life Cycle Cost = Capital Cost + PV of operational cost + PV of maintenance cost + PV of end-of-life disposal cost – PV of residual cost

Eco-efficiency Framework – Selection of Cost-effective Environmental Options

Eco-efficient Manufacturing and Civil Construction
AM – portfolio position of 3D printed impeller, SM – portfolio position of CNC machined impeller, AM’ – Revised portfolio position of 3D printed impeller, SM’ – revised portfolio position of CNC machined impeller

Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA)

S-LCA is a technique that aims to assess the social and sociological aspects of products or services and their potential positive or negative impacts along their life cycle
S-LCA contributes to improvement of social performances of products or services at different stages in the life cycle
Four steps of S-LCA as per ISO14040:2006 and ISO14044:2006
- Step 1: Goal and Scope Definition
  - Functional unit and product or service utility is defined
  - Stakeholder involvement is identified. Five stakeholder categories and subcategories/indicators are considered
    - Workers – Freedoms of association, discrimination, child labour, fair salary, working hours, forced labour, health and safety, social benefits
    - Local community – Respect of indigenous rights, net migration rate, safe, secure, and healthy living conditions, local employment, cultural heritage, community engagement, access to material and immaterial resources
    - Society – Contribution to economic development, corruption, technology development, prevention of armed conflicts, public commitments to sustainability issues
    - Consumers - Health, safety and transparency, consumer privacy, end of life responsibility
    - Value chain actors – Fair competition, promoting corporate social responsibility, supplier relationship, respect to intellectual property rights
- Step 2: Life Cycle Inventory
  - Data is collected from stakeholders
  - Data collection steps and methods vary and data may be both quantitative and qualitative

Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) – Cont.

Step 3: Life Cycle Impact
- Social impact (positive or negative pressure on well-being of stakeholders) – bringing qualitative inventory information together into a single summary or summing up quantitative inventory information within a category
- Impact subcategories
  - Human rights
  - Working conditions
  - Health and safety
  - Cultural heritage
  - Governance
  - Socio‐economic repercussions
Step 4: Interpretation
- Identification of significant issues, conclusions, recommendations
- Social dimension of sustainability is a very complex matter and there is no common unit for assessment
- There is lack of data and collection of data is quite expensive and time consuming
- There is an increasing awareness towards S-LCA and new frameworks/methods are being developed at an increasing rate

Framework of Research Methodology

Weighting of social criteria
- 24 social criteria were chosen
- The experts were asked to rank the criteria from 1 to 24;
- The weights of each impact category or criterion were calculated.
- The result of this criteria development and weighting is a set of 24 weighted social criteria aggregated into 5 social impact categories: human rights, working conditions, cultural heritage, socio-economic repercussion, and governance
Stakeholders’ survey
- Use of a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 means totally disagree and 7 means totally agree,
- Determining the gaps between social perception and expectation.
- If the gap equals zero, the actual state of social aspect exactly matches the stakeholders’ expectation
- if the gap is negative, that means the case is the opposite
- The sum of the gap and weight of each criterion
This study aims to investigate the social implications of palm oil biodiesel via a case study using a life cycle assessment framework.

Interpretation of Results

Working condition and cultural heritage have much wider gaps comparing to the others.
Many of the jobs created in palm oil plantations and mills are for casual day labourers.
- low wages
- lacking of job security
- minimum legal protection.
Displacement of two tribal communities
- Orang Rimba
- Batin Sembilan
The sum of the product of gap and weight of each criterion is -1.5

Required Strategies to Address Social Issues

Working conditions should be improved by strengthen the regulations regarding the casual daily labourer.
- Increasing wage and benefits,
- Improved health and safety standards
- Rights for collective bargaining.
The government needs to take the measures to fully recognize and protect the rights of the tribal communities who are disadvantaged by the expansion of oil palm plantations.

Sustainability Assessment Framework

LCSA = ELCA + LCC + SLCA
- For the same system boundary
- For the same functional unit
- For the same goal

Conclusions - LCA

For sustainable engineering practices
LCA assists in the selection for green product supply chains
- Opportunities for environmental improvement
- Cost-effective environmental mitigation strategies
- Development of strategies for natural resource conservation
- Decision-making tool
Important methodology:
- Reducing waste
- Enhanced resource recovery for modern circular and green economy
- Sustainability performance