Material Grouping for Simplified Product Life Cycle Assessment

In the early stages of product development, the environmental performance of a design needs to be evaluated and balanced with other design objectives. A full Life Cycle Assessment is not suitable at this stage, because of the lack of detailed information and time. This paper presents a simplified method to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the material selection of a product, as a part of a simplified LCA approach. Based on the analysis of the materials’ physical, mechanical and environmental properties, materials are classified into groups according to the type of material and their environmental performance. Material based environmental impact drivers (DM) are defined for each group. By mapping materials into the index of DM, the material based environmental impact of a design alternative can be evaluated on the basis of a few material groups. By replacing the detailed material LCA scores with the index of DM, designers can have a timely assessment on the material based environmental impacts with acceptable accuracy. Summarized information on life cycle inventory analysis is also provided for each material group. A case study is described to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed method.