Mason Contractors: Learn About Life-Cycle Assessment
Words: Dan Kamys SCS Global Services (SCS) is pleased to announce a one-day, intensive introductory training course in life cycle assessment (LCA). The one-day course will be held in Emeryville, Calif., at SCS’ headquarters on March 5, 2012.
LCA is an assessment tool used to evaluate the environmental and human health impacts of products and services from a cradle-to-grave perspective, taking into account each stage of raw material extraction and processing, manufacturing, transportation, use and final disposal. LCA has evolved over four decades, and has been used to guide product design, purchase preferences, and investment decisions. Increasingly, LCA is considered the new paradigm for transparency in environmental labeling, and is being widely adopted for use.
This overview course is suitable to all levels and provides an introduction to LCA principles, a review of the international LCA framework and environmental product declaration standards (ISO 14040, 14044, and 14025), and a summary of the key provisions in a new draft national LCA standard (LEO-SCS-002) being developed under the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) process.
The new standard provides a detailed framework for conducting comprehensive life cycle impact assessment that is sufficiently robust to support public declarations, claims and comparisons. It builds upon and complements the basic international LCA framework, providing guidance to support the calculation of results that are complete, accurate, and will stand up to stakeholder scrutiny.
SCS programs span a wide cross-section of sectors, recognizing exemplary performance in natural resource management, green building, product manufacturing, food and agriculture, retailing and more. SCS is a Certified B Corp., reflecting its commitment to socially and environmentally responsible business practice.