What is the life cycle inventory?

life cycle inventory is one of the four phases of life cycle evaluation. This is a system for evaluating and measurement of environmental impact or service production process. The aim is to measure effects that are specifically caused by a product or service and would not exist without it.

There are internationally agreed standards for life cycle evaluation. These are determined as part of a series of ISO standards, numbered 14040 to 14049. The idea is to ensure that different evaluation organizations use the same method. This gives the results credibility and makes it easier to compare different products and different companies.

There are four phases of the life cycle evaluation process. The first is to decide what will be covered and what the evaluation goal is. The second is an inventory of life cycle. The third phase is to assess the results of the inventory in the form of objective numbers. The last phase that is a maopic subjective is to interpret these results and decide what, if at all, need to be undertakenremedial measure.

The life cycle inventory is therefore "meat" assessment and includes the assembly of all relevant data. This usually covers each phase of the product production process, from the mining of raw materials to the disposal of the product as soon as the consumer completes it. Like product production, data will also include elements such as packaging and transporting components and finished product.

There is a wide range of environment factors that can be measured for each stage of the production process. It is usually measured as the amount of a particular substance. These include input substances: natural resources used to produce a product or services. They also include output substances such as chemical by -products or waste materials.

The net amount of data that must be collected in the life cycle inventory means that most companies will use reserved software to perform the task. Such software often gives users flexibility adaptedBit inventory by their specific circumstances, but also facilitates comparing results in consistent format. The most popular software is a number of packages sold under the GABI brand.

There are several optional factors that can be introduced to make the life cycle inventory more accurate. These may be to take into account the savings of environmental sources, for example, when burning waste material, it may generate energy that would otherwise require coal or gas burning. The evaluation can also be expanded to take into account the effects that occur outside the product life cycle, for example when the waste material is sold to another company to recycle other uses.