Eco-LCA: A tool for quantifying the role of ecological resources in LCA

The ecologically based life cycle assessment (Eco- LCA) tool has been developed to aid for quick implementation of the Eco-LCA methodology. Eco-LCA is a methodology which accounts for the ecosystems goods and services consumption in LCA of economic goods and products. Identification of the current trend of declining ecosystem services by the millennium ecosystem assessment (MEA) has emphasized the need of accounting for ecosystem services in decision making. Eco-LCA provides a step ahead by quantifying many regulating and supporting services that has not been accounted via LCA anywhere else. It also quantifies the provisioning services consumption in product's life cycle. However, it is not claimed to be comprehensive at present due to limitation encountered in quantifying many regulating and supporting ecosystem services. These need more fundamental research to understand the functioning of ecosystems and interaction with technosphere to be able to relate the dependence of economic activities to such ecosystem services. Eco-LCA can be performed at process model based and EIO model based LCA. The current Eco-LCA tool is based on EIO model implementation. This poster intends to highlight the usefulness of Eco-LCA tool in performing the Eco-LCA analysis for any user defined system. The key features of the tool and kind of results that can be obtained using the tool has been shown for comparison of four different types of vehicles based on gasoline and corn-ethanol.