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EDITORIAL: THE STATUS OF LCA IN THE USA
Citation:
Curran*, M A. EDITORIAL: THE STATUS OF LCA IN THE USA. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT 4(3):123-124, (1999).
Description:
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is alive and well in the USA. Concerns for environmental management, over strict command and control approaches, has led to an increasing presence of the life cycle concept since its initial appearance in the 1970's. In addition, the very reasonableness of the life cycle concept in thinking about the entire spectrum of the environment is very appealing and hard to argue against. Through an informal survey of the open literature, combined with personal observations and discussions with people in LCA meetings across the country, this paper presents the author's perception of the status of LCA in the USA.
Many companies either continue or are starting to use the LCA concept for internal checks on their performance but are cautious to use the results in a public forum. Within industry, interest in LCA is driven by the larger, usually multi-national, companies. Being very regulatory ?driven, few US companies are able to see the need or benefit of going Abeyond regulatory compliance.@ It seems that adoption of the life cycle concept within the federal government is lagging behind industry. This may not seem to be the case to those who are familiar with the applications of life cycle costing (LCC) in the Departments of Defense and Energy. However, there is confusion about terms that include the words life cycle, such as LCC and Life Cycle Management (LCM).
Regarding the EPA, this Agency which is structured by air, water, and waste concerns, continues for the most part to follow these lines of responsibility and maintain a single-issue focus. However, the life cycle concept is slowly being introduced into policy discussions, and the Office of Research and Development continues to support a strong LCA research program.
The US needs to continue developing its LCA expertise and allow for LCA researchers and practitioners to come together to share ideas and data in order to reduce the cost of conducting LCA. This will require the continued cooperation, domestically and internationally, between industry, government and academia.