The importance of localfactors for inventory analysis

Abstract

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is an important phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that provides information on environmental impact assessment of products throughout their life cycle. Local factors have an effect that can influence the results of an LCI. Many developed countries established their own databases for inventory analysis thus eliminating the issues related with locality. In some of LCA studies, data of similar systems or technologies are considered into inventory calculations. However, there might be mistakes in the inventory analysis results because of the differences between the real system and the system used as a source. Environmental impact assessment is an important selection criterion in the construction sector with different kinds of materials. Turkey has lack of environmental data and is one of the developing countries which has not yet generated a database for the construction materials. In this study, it was aimed to discuss the importance of local factors for LCI. Therefore, environmental information taken from Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) of the ceramic tiles manufactured in different geographical context were compared. It was pointed out the urgency of local inventory data and concluded that the gaps may be minimized with industry involvement. © 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.