Methodological progress to meet the needs of users

Weidema B P (2000)

Publication info

Invited lecture. Pp. 21-22 in the proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Eco Balance, Tsukuba, 2000.10.31-11.02. Also available in Japanese

Abstract

Market-based system delimitation may reduce the need for data collection in life cycle assessments (LCAs) without compromising reliability. Rather than including all potential suppliers and customers (e.g. in a weighted average), the market-based procedure allows the data collection to be reduced to those suppliers and customers, which are actually affected by a studied product substitution. Furthermore, the uncertainty on the market data will most often determine the level to which the overall uncertainty of the LCA can be reduced, thus providing a limit for what process data it is meaningful to collect.

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