Life Cycle Assessment Methods

This is a theme course of IPD theme 2: Sustainable Design.

Many students will be designing products that aim to be more sustainable than existing products. More generally, students are exposed to many claims of one product or material being more sustainable than another. These claims are based on a quantification of sustainability (for example the CO2 emissions associated with one unit of a product). Understanding how this quantification actually works is key if you want to make well informed decisions.

In this course you will learn about the various quantitative assessment methods that are commonly in use. You will learn how to perform relatively basic Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), and how to read and evaluate more comprehensive LCA reports. In addition to LCA, we will look at other methods such as the circularity calculators used in business context, and Mass Flow Analysis (MFA) and Input-Output Analysis (IOA) that are common in policy making and scientific context.