Refinement of impact assessment methodologies to solve the global local controverse in product life-cycle assessment: Relais type Micro A as an example for a long-lived product

Abstract

For most life-cycle impact assessments global-type stressors only are selected and organized into the respective impact categories, mainly due to the fact, that the life-cycle inventory results in aggregated information on loadings but not on site-specific concentrations. With respect to the local-type impact category “ecotoxicity” two differently in-depth approaches have been developed: The screening approach results in potential ecological loadings. The in-depth approach additionally analyses the character of emission sources and uses a scoring system for the effects assessment. A second local global problem might arise when assessing long-lived products. They often comprise global-type, unspecific and also specific-type, geographically defined stages along their life-cycle. Possibilities and limitations in aggregating the results from both types — also accounting for several LCA applications such as product comparison and identification of improvement options — are presented.