Itaru Yasui

Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo
(7-22-1, Roppongi, Minato-ku Tokyo, 106 Japan)

Abstract

LCA has potential to be used as a tool to measure the impact of human activities on the Earth. Impact analysis will reveal the quantity of human impact on the Earth the established impact coefficients for all kinds of resource acquisition, environmental releases and waste management. Four factors should be considered to invent the coefficients, i.e. impact on ecosystem, impact on human bodies, impact on social systems and impact on global resources. Waste management researchers are expected to propose a new set of such coefficients which express the impacts of waste management processes.

Key words: life cycle assessment, impact on the earth, inventory analysis, impact analysis, role of waste management research.