Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
Residual Resources Engineering, Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
Waste Manag. 2014 Mar;34(3):589-606. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2013.12.004. Epub 2013 Dec 31.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used in waste management to identify strategies that prevent or minimise negative impacts on ecosystems, human health or natural resources. However, the quality of the provided support to decision- and policy-makers is strongly dependent on a proper conduct of the LCA. How has LCA been applied until now? Are there any inconsistencies in the past practice? To answer these questions, we draw on a critical review of 222 published LCA studies of solid waste management systems. We analyse the past practice against the ISO standard requirements and the ILCD Handbook guidelines for each major step within the goal definition, scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation phases of the methodology. Results show that malpractices exist in several aspects of the LCA with large differences across studies. Examples are a frequent neglect of the goal definition, a frequent lack of transparency and precision in the definition of the scope of the study, e.g. an unclear delimitation of the system boundaries, a truncated impact coverage, difficulties in capturing influential local specificities such as representative waste compositions into the inventory, and a frequent lack of essential sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. Many of these aspects are important for the reliability of the results. For each of them, we therefore provide detailed recommendations to practitioners of waste management LCAs.
生命周期评估（LCA）越来越多地用于废物管理，以确定可防止或最大程度减少对生态系统、人类健康或自然资源产生负面影响的策略。然而，为决策者提供的支持的质量在很大程度上取决于 LCA 的正确实施。迄今为止，LCA 是如何应用的？过去的实践中是否存在任何不一致之处？为了回答这些问题，我们对 222 篇已发表的固体废物管理系统 LCA 研究进行了批判性回顾。我们根据 ISO 标准要求和 ILCD 手册指南，针对目标定义、范围定义、清单分析、影响评估和方法学解释阶段的每个主要步骤，分析了过去的实践。结果表明，在 LCA 的几个方面存在不当做法，不同研究之间存在很大差异。例如，经常忽略目标定义，在研究范围的定义中经常缺乏透明度和精度，例如系统边界的定义不明确、影响范围不完整、难以将有代表性的废物组成等有影响力的本地具体情况纳入清单，以及经常缺乏必要的敏感性和不确定性分析。其中许多方面对于结果的可靠性都很重要。因此，我们针对废物管理 LCA 的从业者提供了详细的建议。
