Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for identifying and evaluating the environmental impact of products and services from resource imputs to the eventual disposal of the product or its waste.
The Centre for Water and Waste Technology provides research and consulting services in areas of
- Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA)
- Life Cycle Costing (LCC)
- Sustainability strategy development
- Ecological Footprint and
- Ecolabelling
based on its research experience and collaboration with industry and research partners.
The LCA project team takes a Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) approach addressing technical, environmental and economic aspects under consideration of social issues (if required). At present we cooperate with and work for
- Agricultural and food sector
- Governmental and non-governmental organisations
- Manufacturing industry
- Waste management sector and
- Water service providers.
The Centre utilises the LCE software program GaBi4 to model environmental, economic and social impacts of complex anthropogenic systems. Life cycle inventories data is collected and arranged for all life cycle phases, which represent the options under study. It is a very flexible tool that allows system analysis by life cycle phases or impact categories.
The Centre is involved in the global UNEP / SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. Dr Sven Lundie is chairing Taskforce 3 LCI Methodological Consistency.
To know more, please visit Life Cycle Assessment Standards (ISO 14000) and Life Cycle Assessment Methodology page.
For further information please contact Dr Sven Lundie at S.Lundie@unsw.edu.au.
