Terms
LCA introduces a number of new terms that is sound to explain them. We mention the selection of the most used terms and abbreviations here. We’ll be glad to answer your terminology requests and spread this list.
The sense of this website is to approach the basic LCA terms to the interested parties in environmental impact assessment of products, services and technologies. The aim is not to public “dictionary of terms” but to create background for intercommunication also with those that don’t intend to get in LCA more deeply.
Life cycle – presents consecutive and interlinked stages of a product system from raw material acquisition or generation from natural resources to final disposal.
Impact category – is class representing the problem in environment that is caused by human activity and by that is possible to assign the results of inventory analysis.
Product system – set of processes into which product enters during the whole its life cycle. It’s e.g. unit operations needed in product production or disposal etc.
System boundary – determines when the unit processes will be involved to LCA study.
Function – every product provided to customer has to assure a specific function. The function is a service that we expect from the product.
Functional unit – quantifies the function and provides the basic to what the inputs and outputs are holding out. By the comparison of two products with the same function is necessary to define also same functional unit.
Reference flow – is the quantity of product (service or technology) necessary for filling the function defined by functional unit.
LCA phases – basic four areas of activities in collaborating the LCA studies – see What’s LCA.
We devise the interested parties in detailed interpretation of the most of terms used in LCA to ISO standards – see Legislation and the following literature:
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Guinée, J.B., de Bruijn, H., van Duin, R., Huijbregts, M.A.J.,: Handbook on LCA, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Leiden, Netherlands, 2002, 692 p.
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Hauschild, M., Wenzel, H.: Environmental Assessment of Products. Chapman & Hall, Cambridge 1998.
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Science Applications International Corporation. LCAccess - LCA 101. 2001. http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/lcaccess/lca101.htm