Life Cycle Inventory & Life Cycle Assessment
"Life cycle assessment" - means assessing the entire life cycle of the product, process or activity, encompassing extracting and processing material; manufacturing, transporting and distribution; use, reuse and maintenance; recycling and final disposal. (The Society of Environment, Toxicology and Chemistry, 1993)
Life Cycle Assessment: A Simple Overview of a Complex Process
This powerpoint presentation, prepared by faculty in the Division of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas, provides an overview of the life-cycle assessment process.
Open Source LCI - White Paper
Life Cycle Assessment is a powerful tool to measure the environmental and social impacts of products. In order to overcome the cost and time burdens associated with these studies so that broad adoption can occur, a new approach is needed that fosters the collaborative creation of modular LCI data that can be leveraged by all who want to add value to the process. Open source LCA/LCI provides a framework for accelerating the adoption of LCA methods to inform purchasing decisions that will lead our consumer goods economy toward a sustainable future.
Cotton Life Cycle Assessment (Cotton LCA)
The Center for Agriculture and Rural Sustainability at the University of Arkansas conducted a life cycle assement of global cotton production quantifying the energy required at each phase of production, thereby allowing a comparison of energy intensity across an array of production methods.