Methods for streamlined and qualitative life cycle assessment of products

Within the context of environmental product development and environmental Procurement, it is important to consider the complete life cycle of Products. This is important in order to avoid sub optimisation of the Products. A life cycle assessment (LCA) considers environmental impacts of products and functions from "cradle to gravel,, i.e. from raw material acquisition, via Production and use, to waste management. A complete LCA can be resource demanding and it is therefore of interest to evaluate the possibilities of simplified methods. Three different types of LCAs can be distinguished, a simplified qualitative assessment, a simplified quantitative assessment and a complete assessment. In this study, LCA is in ro uced and different approaches for simplifying LCA is discussed. The focus is on different approaches for qualitative LCA. Advantages and disadvantages are discussed. In future studies, some of these approaches will be tested and evaluated in a case study.