Description: This site allows you to estimate the overall environmental impacts from producing a certain dollar amount of any of 500 commodities or services in the United States. It will provide rough guidance on the relative impacts of different types of products, materials, services, or industries with respect to resource use and emissions throughout the U.S. The entire supply chain of requirements is included, so that the effects of producing a $20,000 car would include not only the impacts of final assembly, but also the impact from mining of metals, making electronic parts, forming windows, etc. that are needed for parts to build the car. This analysis is a form of life cycle assessment based upon an economic input output model of the United States, publicly available data and linear algebra calculation methods. The impact model is linear, so the effects of a $20,000 car purchase would be double that of a $10,000 motor vehicle. Remember that this data is only for production, so impacts of gasoline use and maintenance need to be evaluated separately with EIO-LCA. Environmental impacts include energy use, air pollutants, hazardous wastes, toxics emissions and dollar estimates of external air pollution costs. See the methods page for more information. To make an estimate, you must first browse or search for one of 500 manufacturing or service sectors in the economy modeled by EIO-LCA. It may help to describe a particular process (i.e. oiled, gravure, laminated, etc.), or item (i.e balconies, acetone, cabinets, skewers, etc.) when using keyword searches.
Cost: Free
Learning Resource Type: Teaching - Laboratory/Experiment/Field Activity (College Freshman - College Senior)
Media Type: Unknown
Difficulty: Very Difficult
Audience: From College Freshman To Graduate
Interventions: Software packages
Resource Use: Best free LCA tool available for educational purposes.
Interactivity: Very high
Publication Date: Not Specified
Platform: WWW
Copyright: Not Specified
Comments: 1)Rating: 4 _x000D_Title: How I Use EIO-LCA Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Analysis Software Tool, 8/10/07_x000D_By: Alice Agogino_x000D_Details: Best free LCA tool available for educational purposes.