Integrating LCA as a key element in Sustainable Design Education- Erin Moore, Univ of Oregon, School of Architecture
Erin Moore, Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon's Architecture Department, has added LCA as a topic in the Universities' already acclaimed number one graduate program in the US for Sustainable Design Education by Design Intelligence magazine. The Lifecycle thinking is first introduced to undergraduates in a required Building Construction class as a means to get students thinking about the ecological connection of the products and processes used during the assembly and life of a building. "It helps them to get a picture of where products come from, where they go in the end and what impacts that has on the environment" says Moore. Students in the program can then further their LCA knowledge through two additional seminars taught by Moore, Ecology of Building Materials and Intro to LCA for advanced graduate students. The Ecology of Building Materials seminar gives students the opportunity to actually see products being made and to talk to the manufacturers. The seminar addresses concerns over the short life span of current buildings and the large amount of waste produced by the building industry, primarily through the disposal of materials. Students are prepped to "re-think the lifecycle of construction materials to account for the embodied energy, embodied water, and ecological and human health impacts of their production, use, and disposal (or re-use)".
The final seminar, Intro to LCA, being introduced this spring for advanced graduate students was built in response to requests from students in the previous seminar. The class will allow hands on practice using three LCA tools; BEES, Athena's Impact Estimator and SimaPro.
Moore believes that LCA is in an important concept for architecture students to understand for two main reasons; so that in the future they can easily evaluate and make better design decisions as well as be able to competently work and discuss analyses with LCA consultants.
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Join us in Miami, October 26th & 27th and discover the strategies and tools corporations are using to educate non-sustainability experts on Life Cycle Thinking and the effective use of LCA in the design process. See a demo of our new PackageSmart and our French Partner EVEA's e-DEA software. |
Would you like a free pass to the Greenbuild Expo?
EarthShift along with our Partner, Shelter Analytics, will be exhibiting at the Greenbuild conference this year in Chicago, IL on Nov. 16-18. If you are interested in attending we can provide you with a free pass to come and visit with us. |
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Impact Assessment Methods- learn to build your own
Learn how to build a custom Impact Assessment Method for your organization's use. This 3 hour online course will examine how impact assessments are built in SimaPro and explore making your own including shortcuts for combining categories from various impact assessment methods and using characterization factors already in Excel. Join our Creating Impact Assessment Methods online course on October 26. |
Parameters- October 13
Not sure of the exact distance your raw materials are being transported? Does the efficiency of your equipment vary? Would you like to automate a repetitive calculation or link a change in the density of your product to many processes automatically? How about linking to an Excel spreadsheet or database? These tasks become quick and easy once you understand the power of parameters. Come take this course and learn how to parameterize your models and quickly compare results under different scenarios! |
Attention SimaPro Users!
By way of helping one of our clients with tech support we have discovered that there is an error in the waste scenario Waste USA in the Ecoinvent 2.2 library. If you go under Waste USA/Packaging waste scenario/US U and open the process you will see that the cardboard recycling process is included twice. This error, if not corrected, can result in errors in results. Essentially the duplication results in all cardboard going to recycling (cut-off) rather than 59%, as specified.
To correct this error, simply open the Ecoinvent Unit Processes library and delete one of the cardboard recycling processes. PRe will also address this error in the next SimaPro update. |
