Consumer-oriented life cycle assessment model for car use
| Autor: | Chien-Chung Liu, 劉建忠 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2006 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 94 When conducting environmental systems analyses, one of the ways to look at the society with environmental issues is to see it as a system of production and consumption processes. Many of the issues are usually related with both of those processes. To achieve a sustainable production processes, less pollution and higher efficiency should be pursued, products should be designed to function longer, and should be easily recycled and efficiently discharged. As for the consumption systems, if we want consumption systems sustainable, it is necessary to practice energy conservation, longer use of products, and waste separation. If we take air pollution of mobile source as an example, the use phase is the major pollutant source of consumption items. To reduce pollutants from use phase, producers could improve efficiency, equip their product with a better catalyst, and make it more durable, easily maintained, easily recycled, and dismantled. Producers have been doing many breakthroughs and putting a lot of efforts in these aspects. However, those efforts by producers needs to be coupled with consumers efforts. To let consumers choose more environmentally friendly car and reconsider car use style, such as speed, frequency, or even the whole lifestyle using cars in different ways, more guidance from researches are needed, but actually, the research in this direction is few. When consumers make a decision, priorities are given to initial cost, power, comfort, design, and environmental aspects. For many consumers, environmental aspect is still of less priority, because information on environmental impacts is not available when consumers make a decision that could be relevant to the air pollution. If we have a tool to communicate with consumers two things: environmental aspects of automobiles and emissions difference between different styles, we could let consumers put environmental aspects into consideration. For such communication tool, life cycle assessment (LCA) could be promising because it could communicate comprehensive environmental consequences of different choices. Use of LCA as a communication tool is done using eco-labeling, but that allows consumers only to receive the results of LCA studies. Consumption choices are diverse, and LCA studies are limited. This dilemma could be solved by enabling LCA of consumer choices being conducted by consumers themselves. The objective of this study is to discuss framework of the Consumer-Oriented LCA methodology and design a model of such methodology for choices on car use. First, various items in LCA is discussed to clarify what constitute COLCA and how it could be used. Next, the use and extension of the model is discussed with hypothetical case studies. Using the model, consumers could key in personal inputs, such as car choice, different use styles, and get outputs of mid-point and end-point impacts. The model could be extended by consumers adding and updating impact categories, modules that accounts for consumption items, and inventory data. Finally, we point out future directions of development of COLCA methodology and tools. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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