The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre proactively supports the facilitation of Life Cycle Thinking in business and public administrations. This has involved the development of recommended international methods, indicators, reference data and pilot studies. Here you can find guidelines, papers, reports and other relevant documents.
Waste management
- Supporting environmentally sound decisions for waste management – A technical guide to Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for waste experts and LCA practitioners
- Supporting environmentally sound decisions for bio-waste management - A practical guide to Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
- Supporting environmentally sound decisions for Construction & Demolition (C&D) waste management - A practical guide to Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
ILCD Handbook
- JRC Reference Report: The International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook - Towards more sustainable production and consumption for a resource-efficient Europe
- General guide for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) - Detailed guidance
- General guide for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) - Provisions and action steps
- Specific guide for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data sets
- Recommendations for Life Cycle Impact Assessment in the European context
- Framework and requirements for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) models and indicators
- Review schemes for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
- Reviewer qualification for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data sets
- Analysis of existing Environmental Impact Assessment methodologies for use in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
- Nomenclature and other conventions
- (NEW February 2013!): The new list of ILCD elementary flow has been published as a consequence of the ELCD 3 release. The now 40000 elementary flows cover essentially all emission and resource flows required in current LCA practice. A large number of synonyms have been included to easy substance identification.
ILCD Reference elementary flows as zipped ILCD-formatted xml files (ILCD archive file).
The elementary flow names, CAS No and syno are also available as MS Excel file:
ILCD Reference elementary flows as MS Excel file - ILCD-compliance and ILCD Data Network entry-level requirements - overview of the ILCD-compliance requirements and the ILCD Data Network entry-level requirements, both for LCI data sets for publication via the upcoming ILCD Data Network
If you have comments or observations while using the ILCD Handbook, we would very much appreciate if you took the time to document those using the provided template and send them to: lca[@]jrc.ec.europa.eu
- DRAFT ILCD LCIA method data set format developer kit (SDK), Extract list of draft ILCD-recommended LCIA methods (of Oct. 2010), and example LCIA method data set documentation pattern as MS Excel file (for tool and database developers)
Complementing the ILCD data set format, the draft definition and implementation of the LCIA method data set has now been further developed in cooperation with KIT (Germany) towards a final draft. Note that these drafts may be subject to changes. Next to the example of Photochemical Ozone Creation (POCP - draft), it is foreseen, after further quality control, to make available a broad set of LCIA method data sets as ILCD2011 recommended methods as both Excel file and ILCD formatted xml files (here).
Slides of the half-day short course held in context of the SETAC Annual meeting in Milan, 15 May 2011.
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- European Platform of LCA flyer
- ILCD handbook flyer
- International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Data Network flyer
- Making sustainable consumption and production a reality. A guide for business and policy makers to Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment
- Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment for Waste Management
- Carbon Footprint - what it is and how to measure it
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- Manfredi S., Pant R., Pennington D. & Versmann A. (2011). Supporting environmentally sound decisions for waste management with LCT and LCA. International Journal LCA (16), 937-939
- Pennington D, Wolf M, Bersani R, Pretato U (2007): Overcoming barriers to the broader implementation of life cycle thinking in business and public administration. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 12(7) 458-460
- Mueller-Wenk R, Brandão M, (2010): Climatic impact of land use in LCA - carbon transfers between vegetation/soil and air. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 15(2) 172-182
- Brandão M, Milà i Canals L, Clift R (in press): Soil Organic Carbon changes in the cultivation of energy crops: implications for GHG balances and soil quality for use in LCA. Biomass& Bioenergy
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Here you can find the reports organised by subject. Please click on 'read more' to access the report's list.
Waste management
- Inventory of Existing Studies Applying Life Cycle Thinking to Biowaste Management
- Environmental Assessment of Municipal Waste Management Scenarios: Part I – Data collection and preliminary assessments for life cycle thinking pilot studies
- Environmental Assessment of Municipal Waste Management Scenarios: Part II – Detailed Life Cycle Assessments
- Evaluation of environmental life cycle approaches for policy and decision making support in micro and macro level applications
Life cycle based indicators
Life cycle indicators for resources, products and waste: framework
Life cycle indicators for resources, products and waste: resources, resource-efficiency, decoupling
Life cycle indicators for resources, products and waste: basket-of-products
Life cycle indicators for resources, products and waste: waste management
- Recommendations for life cycle based Indicators for Sustainable Consumption and Production in the European Union - Outcomes of the 3rd International Life Cycle Thinking Workshop on "Sustainability and Decoupling Indicators: Life cycle based approaches"
- Background Review of Existing Weighting Approaches in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)
- Evaluation of Weighting Methods for Measuring the EU-27 Overall Environmental Impact
Carbon footprint
Assessing Temporary Carbon Storage in Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprinting: outcomes of an expert workshop
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- Brandão M and Milà i Canals L (2010) Modelling characterization factors for land-use impacts on ecosystem services: Biotic Production Potential. SETAC Europe 20th Annual Meeting. 23-27 May 2010, Seville
- Koellner T, De Baan L, Beck T, Brandão M, Milà i Canals L, Civit B, Margni M, Saad R, Müller-Wenk R, Wittstock B. Modelling land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCIA under the framework of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. SETAC Europe 20th Annual Meeting. 23-27 May 2010, Seville
- Brandão M and Müller-Wenk R (2010) Impact of land use on climate for use in LCA - carbon cycling between ecosystems and the atmosphere. SETAC Europe 20th Annual Meeting. 23-27 May 2010, Seville
- Brandão M (2009) Land use in LCA: a consequential approach for accounting for impacts on ecosystems. LCA IX. 29 September - 2 October 2009, Boston MA
- Brandão M, Clift R, Milà i Canals L (2009) Food, feed, fibre, fuel, forestry or Nature? Towards Sustainable Land Use - A Life Cycle, Multi-Criteria Approach. Abstract Book. Transitions Towards Sustainability. The 5th International Conference of the International Society for Industrial Ecology, ISIE. Lisbon (Portugal) 21-24 June 2009
- Brandão M, Pant R, Pennington D, Wolf M, Chomkhamsri K, Pretato U, Goralczyk M, (2009) Bio-Waste Treatment: Potential and Difficulties - an environmental life cycle approach. Conference on Bio-waste - need for EU legislation? Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the EU. Brussels, 9-10 June 2009
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