CHAPTER 4 IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Introduction
Life cycle impact assessment LCIA is the third phase of LCA. The main goal of this stage is to interprete the quantified environmental burden in LCI stage.
Impact selection, category indicators, and LCIA model used in this research reflect the environmental issues of the observed system. Classifications involve
aggregation of environmental burdens to a small number of environmental impact categories which will demonstrate their impacts on existed resource depletion. In
this stage, the existed environmental burden is calculated and analyzed as well as interpreted as the potential impacts. The purpose is to present the potential
impacts in the form of analysis which is useful as the research outputs and can be understood by users.
LCA model focuses on physical characteristics of industrial activities and other economic processes; it does not include market mechanisms or secondary
effects on technology development. In general, LCA regards all processes as linear, both in the economy and in the environment. LCA is a supporting tool
based on linear modeling. Furthermore, LCA focuses on environmental aspects of products and disregard the economic, social, and other characteristics. The
environmental impacts are often defined as “potential impacts”, as they are not specified in time and space and are related to an arbitrarily defined functional unit.
Although LCA aims to be science-based, it involves a number of technical assumption and value choices. An important role is played by ISO standardization
process, which helps to avoid the arbitrariness. Another important aim is to make these assumptions and choices as transparent as possible. Finally, fundamental
characteristic considers that LCA is an analytical tool as it provides information for decision support. However, LCA can not replace the decision making process
it self.
The objective of this chapter is to carry out impact assessment on data collected in Chapter 3 and assess some option scenario to obtain optimum result
which reflects the real condition of Indonesia.
Literature Review
In the impact assessment phase, the result of inventory analysis is interpreted on the contribution to a relevant impact category such as the depletion
of abiotic natural resource, climate change, acidification, and many more. There are three different groups of impact category that can be chosen based on the
interest of environment in relation to LCA and available characterization method. Intervension conducted on inventory analysis results is quantified in general
indicator. In impact category, a characterization method consists of category indicators, model characterization, and factor characterization. According to
Ciambrone 1997, Life Cycle Assessment considers 5 output types, i.e.: atmospheric emissions, water borne wastes, solid wastes, products, and by-
products. These are some points of basic characterization methods developed by
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