LCA has, from 1990's, been a topic of growing interests to the steel Industry, as well as other Industries, and independent LCA studies have been conducted by several steel companies and regional associations. However as these studies were different in system boundary and methodology, IISI initiated a global “LCI on Steel Industry Products” in order to avoid inconsistency and duplicated effort. In this paper, the original methodology and outline of the database are described. In additionally new methodology, in which recycling credit of scrap is considered in the LCI data, are also introduced. Finally positive impact value of steel products is verified in several examples.

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This review was focused on subjects such as utilization of aluminum scrap and novel process to develop recycled aluminum materilas. In the case of aluminum alloys, remelting of scrap requires only several percent of the energy needed to produce the same weight of primary aluminum from the ore bauxite. However, insoluble elements such as Fe, Mn, Si, etc, are concentrated and form brittle phases into secondary alloys so that they are used almost exclusively for foundry castings. According to the mass flow analysis of aluminum in Japan, the amount of aluminum scrap is insufficient for demands of secondary alloys and used parts, since a lot of aluminum products have been exported. Thus the cascade of material flow is suitable for the aluminum recycling due to without or less dilution by raw material. But better utilization of the secondary alloys will be desired. To promote the recycle of aluminum, the formability in aluminum second alloys must be improved as wel as the sorting and separation technologies of mixed scrap. Fine microstructure developed by rapid solidification and/or thermomechanical treatment is one of candidates for the material design.

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A basic chemical product like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin is essentially a single material, although it comes in various grades. Not much of LCA studies have been undertaken for PVC materials or components.

Although it is not of an academic topic, a general description is made regarding the LCA promotion activities and data provision by the PVC and related industries.

By achieving widespread use of LCA methods, the industry expect rational and comprehensive judgment to spread among the field of material procurement, and for PVC products to be evaluated fairly and to be used widely.

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This paper is a review on how LCA and its developing tool will be useful for sustainable mobility. Global motorization will give us the affluent society and convenient mobility. However, a large number of vehicles will cause global environmental problems, such as global warming, resources depletion, air pollution, and wastes. We need indicators for evaluating sustainable mobility in order to make a decision on which way to go in the future, especially in case of trade-off. The indicators will consist of three categories (environment, society, and economy) according to Mobility 2030 report and LCA which can evaluate environmental burdens and impacts will become a tool for the first step. We show an overview of automobile LCA case studies in the past and issues on LCI, LCIA and eco-efficiency (Factor X) towards sustainable mobility.

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TMR (Total materials requirement), which refers to the total amount of overburden and rock, were estimated as a fundamental data in this study. 10 kinds of TMR of energy resource and power generation and 62 kinds of TMR of industrial material were approximately estimated based on LCI data. Moreover, a recycle flow analysis based on TMR was proposed. From a result of a study on ELV (End-of-Life Vehicle) recycle flow, followings were shown. 1) A dismantling process which is a pretreatment process for shredding was main process for ELV recycle. Most of Metals, which have large amount of TMR, were collected in the dismantling process. 2) Copper is main component of ASR (Automobile Shredder Residue).

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End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Recycling Law has been ensured since January 2005 and Automobile company and importer have been required to manage fluorocarbons, air-bags and Automobile Shredder Residue (ASR). These companies are changing an ASR treatment method from landfill to incineration with thermal recovery because the law also requires them to increase recycling rate more than 70% of ASR by 2015. This study is to assess these ELV treatment methods to find the effects of the law and important processes to reduce environmental impacts. The assessed ELV treatment methods of this study are a) a shredding and landfill type, b) a shredding and heat recovery type, c) a pressed ELV recycling on electric furnace type and d) pressed ELV recycling on converter type.
As a result, fluorocarbons collecting rate and re-use rate of main parts are specified as more important processes for reducing environmental impacts than others. It is found that ELV and ASR transport process are less important. There is no clear difference of environmental impacts among lawful types, though, these types are about 3000 kg-CO₂ equiv. less than the traditional type, a) a shredding and landfill type.

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This paper proposes a LCA application for evaluating the environmental impacts in the planning phase by the provision of railway systems. The Superconducting MAGnetically LEVitated (MAGLEV) transport system is examined as a case study. Emission factors for standardized infrastructure are introduced for simplification of the inventory analysis with the data availability. The change of LC-CO₂ emission by shifting from the existing inter-regional transport systems (Shinkansen, ordinary railways, airplanes and passenger cars) to the MAGLEV are forecasted by the Extended Life Cycle Environmental Load (ELCEL) concept. An eco-efficiency indicator, considering the performances, is defined and the alternative transport system are evaluated. Also, several environmental load emissions are integrated by the LIME (Life-cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling).

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In this paper, listed are the articles related to LCA case studies for automobile, transport, buildings & construction, infrastructure, home & office appliance, household commodity, clothes and textile, which have been published in International scientific journals with peer review during 1980-2006. Articles in 111 international scientific journals have been queried on “Life Cycle Assessment”, “Life Cycle Analysis”, “LCA”, “LCI”, “LCIA”, etc. 244 articles in total are on list.

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