As the name implies, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluates the entire life cycle of a product, process, activity, or service, not just simple economics at the time of delivery. For example, the total environmental impact of a product is a factor, which is sometimes oversimplified. Stakeholders under the LCA concept go beyond the immediate customer and extend to society as a whole, which may be concerned about such issues as natural resource depletion or the impact of degradation on the environmental. Responses to this greater awareness include "greener" products and processes. Companies concerned with LCA, consider environmental performance of products and processes to be a key issue. Many companies have found it not only responsible but also advantageous to explore ways of moving beyond compliance using pollution prevention strategies and environmental management systems to improve environmental performance. In many cases, LCA leads to better business practices.

What you will learn:

· Basic principles of LCA for use in producing, designing or purchasing sustainable processes, products, or services.

· ISO 14000 standards on the three components of LCA: inventory, impact assessment, and interpretation.

· Actual demonstrations of some of the most popular LCA tools, including:

      o TEAM (Price Waterhouse Coopers)

      o SimaPro (PRe Consultants)

      o Sylvatica (Sylvatica Environmental Consulting)

· Generation of unified taxonomy of environmental impacts for analyses of products, processes, and services.

· From an overview of several case studies (LCA on biorenewables vs fossil fuels, mechanical-chemical-bio pulping processes, chlorine versus UV disinfection technologies and other examples), the fundamentals of LCA

· Examples of pollution prevention systems (Green Chemistry and Engineering) that approach sustainability.

· How to conduct or manage someone conducting an LCA

Who should attend:

Decision makers and analysts from consulting companies, federal facilities, industry organizations, or academia and anyone with an interest in learning how to better incorporate Life Cycle Assessment and environmental performance indices into their decision-making processes.

Instructors:

· Mary Ann Curran, Sustainable Technology Division, NRMRL, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, Ohio

· Tapas K. Das, Washington Department of Ecology, Olympia, Washington

· Melissa Hamilton

· Annie Landfield, First Environment

Moderator: Ulla Johnson, Copernicus Commodity Team Lead, Department of Executive Administration, Purchasing Services Division, City of Seattle, Seattle Washington

Agenda:

      8:30 - 9:30 Fundamentals of LCA (Mary Ann Curran)
(Presentation in html / pdf / pps )

      9:30 - 10:30 LCA software Presentation: TEAM (Annie Landfield)
(Presentation in html / pdf )

      10:30 - 10:45 Break

      10:45 - 11:45 Intro to TCA and LCA software presentations:  SimaPro and Sylvatica (Greg Norris)
(Presentation in html / pdf / ppt )

      11:45 - 12:15 Q & A

      12:15 - 1:30 Lunch (on your own)

      1:30 - 3:00 LCA Applications and Case Studies (Tapas K. Das)

Coffee and tea and a light refreshment will be provided in the morning.