LCA: Appllication to Building Materials and Building Decisons, 1997 Nonwovens Conference Proceedings

Application of the Environmental Life Cycle Assessment methodology to building materials will be discussed. The way in which process analysis is used to reveal the details of the life cycle of specific building materials and how they intervene in the total life cycle of the whole building will be illustrated. The importance of clearly and comprehensively defining this process sequence in terms of the intended use and purpose of the Life Cycle Assessment is essential to constructing an analytical framework that is manageable and capable of meeting the objective of the LCA. Identification and careful consideration of the values of all stakeholders is essential to the successful completion and acceptance of an LCA. Methodologies for dealing with the concerns of a diverse group of stakeholders and their differing sets of ‘values” are suggested. These approaches clearly demonstrate that LCA can be successfully applied to such complex systems as buildings and building materials, and that LCA can be a very powerful and practically tool for environmental decision making.