Initial LCA Questionnaire

This intake form is designed to be general, evocative, and comprehensive. Each section contains prompts presented as questions, and you may find it impossible or unnecessary to answer every question depending on your organization, your current knowledge, and on the goal of your LCA – Life Cycle Assessments tool.

Guidelines of the Survey - Finding the LCA Tool

Answer as many questions as you feel are relevant to meet your needs. Feel free to skip any sections or details that don’t apply to the goal or scope of your study, or to combine answers across sections depending on your documentation.

Where applicable, provide as many sources and as much evidence as possible to help substantiate your answers. This will aid our experts in providing a more accurate representation of your product or process.

For context, you may want to provide consumer, end-user, or marketing literature. Feel free to use the upload fields in the questionnaire.

Name

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PRODUCT SYSTEM

For the purposes of the LCA, define the system you want to study.

Q1. What is the exact product or process you're trying to assess?

Q2. What are the important components or parameters you want to consider?

Q3. What are the important components or parameters you want to consider?

Q4. Which parts of your system are you trying to investigate or improve, and which parts are you content to ignore or de-emphasize?

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PRODUCT SYSTEM INPUTS

Q5. What are the material inputs of your system?

Q6. What are the water, fuel, electricity, and/or recycled inputs?

Q7 .How do you get the inputs to the fabrication or manufacturing site?

Q8. How do you then supply the inputs to the system? Who are your suppliers, and where are they located? Please include the primary contact information for as many suppliers as possible.

Q9. Are any of your inputs subject to standardization, or to any other special regulation or consideration?

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INTERMEDIATES, BY-PRODUCTS, AND CO-PRODUCTS

Q10. What are the intermediate products associated with your product system?

Q11. Which intermediate processes are required to produce your intermediate products?

Q12. What portion of your inputs are designated for intermediate products?

Q13. What are the intermediate byproducts, coproducts, scrap, emissions, and waste associated with the system? Which intermediate processes produce these?

Q14. What portion of your inputs are designated for each of these?

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OUTPUTS

Q15. What are the outputs of the product system?

Q16. Which processes are required to produce them?

Q17. What portion of primary inputs and/or intermediates are designated for the final desired product?

18. What are the byproducts, coproducts, scrap, emissions, and waste associated with the outputs? Which processes produce these?

Q19. What portion of your primary inputs and/or intermediates are designated for each of these?

Q20. Are any of your outputs subject to standardization, or to any other special regulation or consideration?

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TRANSPORTATION

Q21. What are your major transportation channels (e.g., flight, cargo ship, freight train, trucks, couriers, etc.)? With which parts (input, intermediate, output) of the system are they each associated?

Q22. What are the transportation costs or impacts associated with each channel and with each part of the system? That is, to what extent can you access detailed information about the vehicles (such as distance travelled, energy and fuel usage, emissions, etc.)?

Q23. Are there any processes in your system that demand significantly more transportation considerations than others? In any case, is mitigating this demand part of your goal?

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ENERGY

Q24. Do you generate your own energy? If so, how? In any case, what are the total energy demands for your product system, and how do you meet them? Please provide as many details as possible.

Q25. How do you supply the energy to the system? What are the costs associated with energy transport?

Q26 Are there any processes in your system that demand significantly more energy than others? In any case, is mitigating this demand part of your goal?

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END OF LIFE

Q27. What is the current strategy for the product's end of life (EOL)?

Q28. How repairable is a final product that is approaching EOL?

Q29. What portion of your EOL final product is recyclable?

Q30. What portion of your EOL final product can be added back to the product system directly as recycled input(s)?

Q31. Does infrastructure exist for aftermarket returns, repair, resale, refurbishment, or recycling of your EOL product?

Q32. Who provides this infrastructure? What are the difficulties and/or costs associated with providing or participating in this infrastructure?

For more information, see WEEE compliance and European Ecodesign Regulations.

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OTHER PRODUCT LCA DETAILS

Is your system and/or its inputs and output(s) subject to any other special considerations not listed above? Examples may include hazardous substances or materials with social compliance considerations.

Q33. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with any of these?

Q34. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with raw material acquisition or retention?

Q35. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with market entry or market volatility?

Q36. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with regional or temporal market differences?

Q37. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with client acquisition or retention?

Q38. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with industry or other organizational commitments or dues?

Q39. Are there significant issues, impacts, or costs associated with unit repair, refurbishment, reuse, recycling, or end-of-life phase?

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Example Information for the Life Cycle Assessments Tool

Please refer to the hammer example below and see what type of details we are looking for.

Don’t hesitate to email us if you need any assistance.

The frame represents our boundary in the product system. In this example, the process under review is the assembly of the hammer. We are including the finished head, the finished handle, and the assembly process. We are also including the chemicals needed to assemble the hammer. Everything else is excluded or de-emphasized.

The frame represents a different boundary in the product system. In this example, the inputs to the system are the finished head, the finished handle, and the chemicals (adhesives) used to assemble the hammer before packaging. Not shown: electricity, water, etc.

The frame represents a different boundary in the product system. In this example, the process under review is the assembly of the hammer, including all raw materials and packaging. The hammer head and hammer handle are intermediate products, created by intermediate processes from raw materials and fuel/electricity. The assembled hammer is also an intermediate product, created by an intermediate process involving the head, handle, and chemicals. Finally, the final packaged product is itself created from intermediate products (the assembled hammer, packaging materials, more chemicals) through yet another intermediate process.

The boundary and product system shown here is the same as the previous example, except simplified. Here, the output of the system is the assembled, packaged hammer. In this example, scrap or waste associated with the hammer assembly process is considered an intermediate product (and, perhaps only later, an output). On the other hand, scrap or waste associated with the packaging process is immediately considered an output.

More information on
Life Cycle Assessment Tool

If you have any questions, please get in touch with an Enviropass Expert!