Lca - Life Cycle Assessment Laboratory

Human activities are responsible for an environmental impact that cannot be overlooked. The prerequisite to achieve an impact reduction is the quantification of the environmental effects and the identification of the sub-processes that mainly contribute to these negative effects. Only with the identification of the environmental hotspots will be possible to identify effective mitigation solutions. While on the one hand, the development of policies aimed at increasing sustainability cannot ignore the quantification of environmental impacts with robust and internationally recognized assessment approaches, on the other hand, companies that undertake environmental optimization processes aimed at mitigating their environment impact, need to communicate the achieved results to the consumer in a clear, concise and effective way.
The specific objectives of the laboratory are:
- Design of an environmental impact assessment study of a product and/or service and identification of the information necessary to conduct the study.
- Collection of the data necessary for the analysis
- Processing of data collected using commercial software
- Critical analysis of environmental impact assessment studies available in the literature or already disclosed for commercial/marketing purposes

At the end of the laboratory, the students will be able to:

- Critically analyze LCA studies
- Set up a life cycle analysis study by defining the scope, the goal and system boundaries
- Plan the collection of data necessary for an environmental impact analysis study by identifying the possible data sources
- Use the demo/basic version of the Simapro® software
- Evaluate and quantify the benefits deriving from the various impact mitigation strategies that can be implemented.