Initiative about developing Chinese LCIA method  | 开发中国生命周期评价方法的倡议

Ecovane wants to commit an initial fund of 20k rmb and time to support the globally environmental scientist community to work together to develop a Chinese LCIA method – the ECOVANE2020 initiative, the fund will be used to cover  the development expense, and we also welcome funding support from other likely minded sources to join the journey. For business leaders who are also interested to donate please email: bill.k2 (at) 1mi1.cn

We understand that for a small business like us there is very limited chance of return on devoting time to a task as such, the method once developed, will be shared by the international sustainability community freely and nobody will be able to claim profit from the method, however we also understand that developing a Chinese LCIA method will be not only necessary, but also important for millions of policy makers, CEOs, researchers and conscious consumers to make better decisions toward changes for a better world, from and in China.

The Ecovane2020 initiative and method will be communicated to global environmental community and adopted soon in product and service environmental impact analysis and declaration such as China EPD.

And now, we need scientist and expert like you to volunteer and sign up for the challenge, are you willing to join the discussion and provide suggestion? please wechat me (Ecovanebill) or email bill.k2(at)1mi1.cn. Thank you!

*figure: the Life cycle impact assessment - characterization model (source; researchgate)

Some background of developing Chinese LCIA method

We are entering a new era that calls for more mutual respect of diversity and value among people from different region and background, being it either from Asia, Europe, Africa, or America…whatever colors of skin, and whatever language people speak, we are all living in the same universe, and now the universe we called home are under threat. Global warming, endangered biodiversity as well as depletion of none renewable resources… all of which send clear signals to human being that somewhere, something went wrong and we are in trouble.

Realizing that the environmental impact is hardly reversable and the consequence is unbearable, we must understand the root cause of the impact from our daily manufacturing and consumption activities and then take action to reduce the impact and hopefully steer the ship of homeland toward sustainable prosperity. The environmental scientist community has worked for decades to develop knowledge and methods to analyze the relationship between human activities and environmental degradation, among the efforts, product life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has been developed and acknowledged as an established methods, representative LCIA methods include IPCC 2013 to address global warming impacts and Recipe (formally Eco-indicator 95/99) and ILCD and etc to address a more complete spectrum of impacts of resource depletion, bio-diversity and human health impacts, among many other methods.

In order to understand and interpret regional environmental impact issue more accurately, scientist has been working on developing LCIA methods to reflect the character of various countries and region, including methods such as Traci for different states in USA, and Eco-scarcity for Switzerland and so on. Considering that there is not yet a local LCIA method that consider the geological, sociological, and ecological perspective of China and Asia, we need a regionalized life cycle impact method that address the true burden and impact in China locally.

Despite the urgency of developing a China LCIA method, the task remains a challenging one considering the intrinsic complexity of the issue itself, which means it is hardly a job done by a single person alone given limited time and resource to cover the various sectors of chemical toxicity, human health, resource depletion, bio-diversity and so on. We need a team of committed experts in order to make the breakthrough.