Life Cycle Assessment for Environmental Hazards

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) include many of these environmental hazards. LCA can be used to compare the environmental impacts of producing plastic products. Sustainability for manufacturing can be categorized into generation of GHGs, solid and liquid wastes, and air and water pollution. 

The United Nations Environment Program and the Society for the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry provide a Web site with information on LCA including approaches for capability development, methodologies, data, resources, and impacts. The Life Cycle Initiative includes LCA publications and manual. The goal of the initiative is to enable people around the world to use LCA more frequently and efficiently. The Life Cycle Initiative can establish a global network of LCA experts to establish and manage best practices of LCA across multiple industries and product sectors (Life Cycle Initiative 2013). 

National Energy Laboratory (NREL) created a U.S. life cycle inventory database to provide support for developers of LCA models of products and services. (U.S. NREL 2014). The database provides cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave LCI information to account for energy and material flows into and out of environments for products and services. The goals of the LCI database are to maintain data quality of 

Sustainable Plastics Environmental Assessments of Biobased, Biodegradable, and Recycled Plastics, First Edition. Joseph P. Greene. 

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