Panel chair: Mike Levy (American Plastics Council)
Panel members: Paola Kistler (Alcan), Bill Heenan (American Iron and Steel Institute/American Iron & Steel Institute), Wayne Trusty (Athena Institute), Candace Wheeler (GM/Vehicle Recycling Partnership - VRP) and the session chair, Mike Levy (American Plastics Council)

In recognition of the growing need for solid up-to-date life cycle assessment (LCA) inventory data for North America, data collection efforts have been conducted for several raw materials - plastics, wood products, steel, and aluminum - and as a part of the Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP). These efforts will provide a variety of users - LCA practitioners, database modelers, interested parties, and government agencies - an opportunity to utilize primary industrial data in a transparent process to efficiently build and conduct full product life cycles of North American products.

This discussion forum will focus on the development, use, and dissemination of industry-based databases. The scope of the database session will include:

o Data collection and protection
o The role of data quality assessment and peer review
o Aggregation requirements and challenges
o Data and LCA marketing
o Data collection and maintenance funding

Each panel member will provide a 10 minute presentation concerning their database development activities and learnings. Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion with the goal of developing guidelines for industrial database preparation.

Paola Kistler - slides
Bill Heenan - slides
Wayne Trusty - slides
Candace Wheeler - slides
Mike Levy - slides

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