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Introduction to Life-Cycle Assessment and Decision Making
Applied to Forest Biomaterials
Jesse Daystar and Richard Venditti
North Carolina State University, Department of Forest Biomaterials, Raleigh, NC, USA
All models are wrong; some are useful
Albert Einstein
5.1 Introduction
5.1.1 What is LCA?
Demands on the earth’s resources are escalating with increasing population and
standards of living. These new demands are causing the increased extraction of raw
materials harvested from the environment and emissions and wastes that are ultimately
introduced into the environment. It is mankind’s responsibility to actively search for
the best solutions to meet the society’s needs and to be the best steward of the planet.
For every demand that society has, there are an infinite set of possible solutions
including different products, behaviors, and services to meet the demand. Life-cycle
assessment (LCA) is a comprehensive life-cycle approach that quantifies ecological and
human health impacts of a product or system over its complete life cycle. LCA uses
credible scientific methods to model steady-state, global environmental and human
health impacts. It can provide quantitative measures of multiple environmental impacts
that can help us to choose more sustainable pathways. LCA helps decision makers
understand the scale and trade-offs of many environmental and human health impacts
for competing products, services, policies, or actions.
There are many definitions of sustainability but the major idea is safeguarding
our natural resources today so that future generations can continue to use the same
resources indefinitely. The University of California, Los Angeles, sustainability group
states that
the physical development and institutional operating practices that meet the
needs of present users without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs, particularly with regard to use and waste of natural
resources. Sustainable practices support ecological, human, and economic health
and vitality. Sustainability presumes that resources are finite, and should be used
Introduction to Renewable Biomaterials: First Principles and Concepts,First Edition.
Edited by Ali S. Ayoub and Lucian A. Lucia.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
