Life Cycle Assessment for beginners

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that is slowly gaining popularity in the study of the environmental impacts of products. In buildings, it's use is still sparse and not always consistent. However, I came across a few products that are fairly useful in exploring how an LCA study works, its different parts, the lingo...Image via Wikipedia

First up, Sustainable Minds is an online based tool that allows you to fairly easily create an LCA of a product, say a shipping container. The tool walks you through the necessary steps to set up a baseline case and then explore alternate designs. The approach taken boils down the LCA indicators to a single score called the Okala points. A free one month trial is offered and academic pricing is available. They have also begun offering weekly webinars. If you are a designer of products, even building products, this may be a good tool if you are interested in quantifying the environmental impact of your design.

Second up, is perhaps its main competitor Greenfly. This tool is somewhat similar, although perhaps it is even more friendlier to use as it guides the user with useful tips along the way to reduce the environmental impact. The tool was created in Australia, and it is free. Well, it's free for now. It seems that they are offering a free trial until they work out all the bugs.

Finally, there is the LCA Calculator which is set up as a list of drop down menus and such. It is perhaps most useful for a quick comparison of design alternatives, but not as refined as the previous two tools. Nonetheless, it is available for free.

So there you go. If you are a designer of any kind, you have probably felt the urge to justify how green your design is. These tools can help you 1) become familiar with LCA methodology and 2) calculate numbers to substantiate your "green" claims. Be sure to check these LCA tools out and keep an eye for new ones!