Life cycle assessment data relevance

These early life cycle assessments provided estimates of exposure and risk in the United States that do not appear to have been revisited since. The US EPA has collected some relevant data under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program, however, which are presented in Section 4.2.7. 

The life cycle inventory is a quantification of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental release data associated with the production of cotton fixrm cradle-to-gate (fiber) and manufacturing from gate-to-gate (fabric). The associated life cycle assessment models the environmental impact of representative cotton apparel from the field through to consumer care, use and disposal. 

Inventory analysis involves data collection and calculation procedures to quantify relevant inputs and outputs of a product system. These inputs and outputs may include the use of resources and releases to air, water, and land associated with the system. These data also constitute the input to the life-cycle impact assessment. 

Ecological data have been collected for all the products in this project as well as for all process steps required (see Table 13.1). First a life-cycle inventory was established for aU relevant ecological inputs. In a second step a data assessment was carried out aggregating individual data into 10 environmental categories such as anthropogenic green house effect, eutrophication potential, and the like (Fig. 13.21). 

The International Standard Organization (ISO 14040) [26] breaks the LCA framework into four main stages (1) Goal and scope definition of the study. This stage clarifies the purposes of carrying the study while the assumptions and system boundaries are described clearly. (2) Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis. LCI involves data collection and calculation procedures to quantify relevant inputs and outputs of the entire system defined within the system boundaries. (3) Life cycle impact assessment involves qualifying the potential environmental impacts of the inventory analysis results. (4) The interpretation of the results from the previous phases of the study in relation to the objective of the study. This interpretation can be in form of conclusions and recommendations to decision-makers for process changes to deliver improvement in the environmentel performance. 

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