Development of a conceptual framework to take the dissipation of non-energetic abiotic resources into account within Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Life cycle assessment is a valuable tool to assess the ecological performance of a product system holistically. However, it is still an imperfect tool for which some of the impact categories especially need to be revisited. Abiotic resource use is an impact category for which much debate has been going on in the last years. Methodological choices in the existing indicators are often criticized, and the usefulness of results is of questionable relevance to decision takers in the industry or the policy makers. Dissipation of those resources has been identified as a promising way forward. Dynamic material flow analysis can serve as an important basis to account for dissipated flows in a product system at different scales, and therefore serve as first steps towards the integration of dissipation in life cycle assessment. The ongoing work presented here aims at proposing a sound methodology based on dynamic material flow analysis to implement the dissipation of abiotic resources in life cycle assessment.