DETERMINING THE FEASIBILITY OF USING A STANDARDIZED INVENTORY DATABASE FOR CALCULATING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PRODUCTS

A study environmental impact data for metals and polymers is conducted to consider the stability of the data. It was found that the variation in environmental impacts for materials data may vary by orders of magnitude. Therefore, academe, policy makers, industry, and other interested parties must calculate impacts for the entire lifecycle of a product for decision making purposes. If environmental impacts are based on average data or other data that is not specific to the product under question for most purposes the tremendous variability will leave the calculation meaningless. Variables considered in this analysis include: time, process variability, input variability, recycling of materials, product design, and location.