LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS EXAMPLE

life cycle

a series of stages through which an organism passes between recurrences of a primary stage
the course of developmental changes in an organism from fertilized zygote to maturity when another zygote can be produced
The series of changes in the life of an organism, including reproduction
A life cycle is a period involving all different generations of a species succeeding each other through means of reproduction, whether through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction (a period from one generation of organisms to the same identical).

analysis

The process of separating something into its constituent elements
Detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, typically as a basis for discussion or interpretation
the abstract separation of a whole into its constituent parts in order to study the parts and their relations
a form of literary criticism in which the structure of a piece of writing is analyzed
The identification and measurement of the chemical constituents of a substance or specimen
an investigation of the component parts of a whole and their relations in making up the whole

life cycle analysis example – Environmental Life

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services: An Input-Output Approach

Environmental life cycle assessment is often thought of as cradle to grave and therefore as the most complete accounting of the environmental costs and benefits of a product or service. However, as anyone who has done an environmental life cycle assessment knows, existing tools have many problems: data is difficult to assemble and life cycle studies take months of effort. A truly comprehensive analysis is prohibitive, so analysts are often forced to simply ignore many facets of life cycle impacts. But the focus on one aspect of a product or service can result in misleading indications if that aspect is benign while other aspects pollute or are otherwise unsustainable. This book summarizes the EIO-LCA method, explains its use in relation to other life cycle assessment models, and provides sample applications and extensions of the model into novel areas. A final chapter explains the free, easy-to-use software tool available on a companion website. (www.eiolca.net) The software tool provides a wealth of data, summarizing the current U.S. economy in 500 sectors with information on energy and materials use, pollution and greenhouse gas discharges, and other attributes like associated occupational deaths and injuries. The joint project of twelve faculty members and over 20 students working together over the past ten years at the Green Design Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, the EIO-LCA has been applied to a wide range of products and services. It will prove useful for research, industry, and in economics, engineering, or interdisciplinary classes in green design.

Somali Bantu in Tanzania: A century-old cycle of displacement comes full circle

Somali Bantu girls, Amina (orange dress), 8 and her sister Subira (yellow dress),10 in Chogo settlement, Tanzania. According to their grandmother, Fatuma, they left Somalia in 1999. Fatuma says: "In Somalia, before the war it was a nice place. We cultivated the land and were business people traveling around. Now it is no longer peaceful in Somalia. In Tanzania the life is very peaceful and we can do what we want. Life is still a struggle. Here we are beginning a new life. We have to build new homes and new farms must be tended. We will struggle to make it better. We hear that in other camps the refugees are frustrated. But here we are citizens now. My granddaughters could even be president someday. In Somalia, for a Bantu, that would never be possible."

Many Hundreds of Somali Bantu refugees were granted Tanzanian citizenship in 2007 and 2008. The refugees currently living in Chogo began arriving in Tanzania in the early 1990’s.Their ancestors were originally from the Tanga province (Tanzania) and had been sold into slavery hundreds of years ago. All photos UNHCR / Brendan Bannon

Local integration: Local integration can be regarded as a process which leads to a durable solution for refugees. It is a process with three necessary interrelated dimensions:

First, it is a legal process, whereby refugees are granted a progressively wider range of rights and entitlements by the host state. Under the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention, these include, for example, the right to seek employment, to engage in other income-generating activities, to own and dispose of property, to enjoy freedom of movement and to have access to public services such as education. The process whereby refugees gain and accumulate rights may lead to the acquisition of permanent residence rights and ultimately to the acquisition of citizenship in the country of asylum.

Second, local integration can be regarded as an economic process. For in acquiring the rights and entitlements referred to above, refugees also improve their potential to establish sustainable livelihoods, to attain a growing degree of self-reliance, and to become progressively less reliant on state aid or humanitarian assistance. In accordance with these indicators, refugees who are prevented or deterred from participating in the local economy, and whose standard of living is consistently lower than the poorest members of the host community, cannot be considered to be locally integrated.

Third, local integration is a social process, enabling refugees to live amongst or alongside the host population, without fear of systematic discrimination, intimidation or exploitation by the authorities or people of the asylum country. It is consequently a process that involves both refugees and the host population.

The concept of local integration does not imply the assimilation of refugees in the society where that have found asylum. While the concept of assimilation is to be found in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the international community has always rejected the notion that refugees should be required or expected to abandon their own culture, so as to become indistinguishable from members of the host community. As one scholar has pointed out, integration is a more useful term than assimilation, suggesting as it does that refugees “maintain their own identity, yet become part of the host society to the extent that host population and refugees can live together in an acceptable way.”

Taken from: "The local integration and local settlement of refugees: a conceptual and historical analysis", Jeff Crisp ; Reearch Working Paper nr. 102

Somali Bantu in Tanzania: A century-old cycle of displacement comes full circle

Daily life in Chogo. Many Hundreds of Somali Bantu refugees were granted Tanzanian citizenship in 2007 and 2008. The refugees currently living in Chogo began arriving in Tanzania in the early 1990’s.Their ancestors were originally from the Tanga province (Tanzania) and had been sold into slavery hundreds of years ago. All photos UNHCR / Brendan Bannon

Local integration: Local integration can be regarded as a process which leads to a durable solution for refugees. It is a process with three necessary interrelated dimensions:

First, it is a legal process, whereby refugees are granted a progressively wider range of rights and entitlements by the host state. Under the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention, these include, for example, the right to seek employment, to engage in other income-generating activities, to own and dispose of property, to enjoy freedom of movement and to have access to public services such as education. The process whereby refugees gain and accumulate rights may lead to the acquisition of permanent residence rights and ultimately to the acquisition of citizenship in the country of asylum.

Second, local integration can be regarded as an economic process. For in acquiring the rights and entitlements referred to above, refugees also improve their potential to establish sustainable livelihoods, to attain a growing degree of self-reliance, and to become progressively less reliant on state aid or humanitarian assistance. In accordance with these indicators, refugees who are prevented or deterred from participating in the local economy, and whose standard of living is consistently lower than the poorest members of the host community, cannot be considered to be locally integrated.

Third, local integration is a social process, enabling refugees to live amongst or alongside the host population, without fear of systematic discrimination, intimidation or exploitation by the authorities or people of the asylum country. It is consequently a process that involves both refugees and the host population.

The concept of local integration does not imply the assimilation of refugees in the society where that have found asylum. While the concept of assimilation is to be found in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the international community has always rejected the notion that refugees should be required or expected to abandon their own culture, so as to become indistinguishable from members of the host community. As one scholar has pointed out, integration is a more useful term than assimilation, suggesting as it does that refugees “maintain their own identity, yet become part of the host society to the extent that host population and refugees can live together in an acceptable way.”

Taken from: "The local integration and local settlement of refugees: a conceptual and historical analysis", Jeff Crisp ; Reearch Working Paper nr. 102

life cycle analysis example

Planet Earth is under stress from various environmental factors, increasing the importance of being able to estimate the environmental costs associated with dynamic material shifts. Such shifts are occurring in the electronics industry and the most famous recent example is the introduction of lead-free solders. “Global Life Cycle Impact Assessments of Material Shifts” describes the environmental implications of this shift to lead-free solders and conductive adhesives using the standardized methodology of environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA). As the product systems involved are rather small for interconnection materials it is possible – using uncertainty analysis and consequential LCA – to arrive at robust conclusions, even in the difficult holistic field of environmental cost accounting. The lead-free shift has many implications, such as the export of electronics waste, resource consumption, recycling issues, and technology development.