On Monday, Sept 24th, during LCA XII, Melissa Hamilton and Nathan Ayer will present a short course on Navigating a Critical Review, and on Tuesday Nathan will lead a special session on Wood Biomass Systems where he and Lise will both present. 

We are also looking forward to next weeks  Sustainable Packaging Forum in Pittsburgh, PA Sept 11-13th and the New Metrics of Sustainable Business Conference in Philadelphia Sept 27-28.  We hope to see you all at these great events! 

Read an interview with Martin Wolf from Seventh Generation about why he chose to use SimaPro. As a twenty-year LCA practitioner, his insights shed light on the complexity of sustainability decision-making. They also offer a glimpse into how a company like Seventh Generation approaches their commitment to sustainability on a daily basis.

Our training offerings continue to expand.  

• Join Lise Laurin for our new Methods for Evaluating Social and Economic Impacts course which explores the strengths and weaknesses of social LCA and other methodologies, and how each is best used. 
• Sign up now for our mid-September on-line Recycling course Sept 17 & 19 to learn how to integrate recycled material into various product scenarios.  
• We have changed the date of the  Water Footprinting Class to Nov 6 & 7.  There are still a few spaces so sign up soon for this opportunity to learn from world expert Dr Stephan Pfister. 
• Our next LCA Interpretation class has just been scheduled for Oct 30, 31 & Nov 1st.  Take this 9 hour live on-line course to learn the ISO methodological details required to interpret an LCA study.

 The EarthShift Team  

EarthShift is pleased to welcome Dave Hartter to the role of Senior Sustainability Analyst in our Consulting Services Group. Dave recently completed a degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech University. He comes from a career in plastics engineering with both GE Plastics and Rubbermaid and  holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.  

At Rubbermaid, Dave split his time between implementing life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for the environment (DFE) capabilities within the innovation team for the home products division, and leading a cross-functional team to develop Rubbermaid's environmental sustainability strategy. Prior to this he led technical development and initiatives around DFE as well as product design, product testing and manufacturing development projects.

"Ultimately, I saw that a lot of the decisions around sustainability revolve around economics. If I could get an economic background, then I knew I could help bolster the case for sustainability initiatives and things like LCA," he says.

Read more about Dave on our blog. 

 LCA XII will take place in Tacoma, Washington this year from September 25th until the 27th. The theme for this year's conference is "Life Cycle Thinking; Life Cycle Living."   

On Monday September 24th EarthShift Director Melissa Hamilton and Senior Analyst Nathan Ayer will teach a special course "Critical Review: How to Successfully Navigate the Critical Review Process, Avoid Common Pitfalls & Increase the Likelihood of a Successful Review". Consider taking this course if you intend to publish the results of your LCA or use it to support marketing claims or comparative assertions. ISO 14044 requires that your study undergo a 3rd party critical review process prior to publication. 

It sounds easy enough, but successfully navigating the critical review process, avoiding common pitfalls, and having a positive review experience can be difficult, time consuming and expensive. Take this course to successfully navigate the process. "All too often we see clients that have gone through an LCA with the intention to publish the results only to find that they gave little to no thought about critical review.  When this happens it can stall the whole project or worse," says Melissa. Take this course to successfully navigate the process. 

On Tuesday, September 25th, Nathan Ayer will lead a special session on the LCA of Wood Biomass Energy Systems at 3pm. 

Wood biomass has been identified as an attractive option in many jurisdictions to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. But conflicting results published on wood biomass energy have raised questions about the assumptions used in modeling these systems, leaving many policy-makers uncertain of how to proceed. This session will explore the use of LCA to inform policy development on wood biomass energy. To round out the session, Lise Laurin will present on how S-ROI can be used to combine LCA with the indirect and social effects of biomass policy. 

These are just two of the many learning opportunities offered at this year's conference. We hope to see you there! To sign up for the conference, click here. 

EarthShift's Water Footprint and Water Use Assessment in LCA class has been rescheduled for November 6 and 7 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There are only several spots left, so please register soon!   

The class will still be taught by Dr. Stephan Pfister, a leader in introducing impact assessment of water consumption into LCA. He is also responsible for providing one of the main regionalized inventory datasets and framing the water footprint methodology. Pfister is senior research associate at ETH Zurich and serves as editor for water flows in the ecoinvent database, and for water research at the International Journal of LCA. 

For more information, click here. 

 On October 9th, we are offering a new online course to help Sustainability practitioners better understand methods for evaluating economic and social impacts of their decisions.   

The science of Life Cycle Assessment has quickly become the methodology of choice for evaluating environmental impacts of products and services. Although the methodology is still young and has identified weaknesses, it is by far the most robust method for comparing environmental sustainability of one product over another or one process for making a product to another.

Industry and governmental groups have been asking for equivalently robust methodologies to assess societal impacts, and a means of bringing the societal, environmental and all important economic impacts into a single methodology. This class will explore the various methods proposed for assessing social and economic impacts as well as methodologies for combining assessments for a 3-pillared sustainability assessment. We will explore the social LCA methodology proposed by the UNEP SETAC life cycle initiative, Life Cycle Costing, ecosystem services valuation, Total Cost Assessment (these latter two are both also called Full Cost Accounting) and Sustainability Return on Investment.

Modeling different recycling scenarios in LCA can be daunting. If you are building a product made from recycled materials do you account for the impacts of raw material extraction; or if your product is going to be recycled do you account for the processes for the breaking down and the recycling of the material? Where do the boundaries lie? How do you allocate for these issues?   

This course will go over the methods used for recycling scenarios as well as how and why to use them. This course will look at the allocation issues involved in building scenarios that have recycled material coming into the product/process as well as recycled material leaving the product/process. The class will be held September 17 and 19 from 1-4pm EST. 

Click here for more information. 

There are a number of great sustainability-related conferences around the world that we attend - to network, stay engaged, and learn about the latest developments in the world of LCA, technology, and environmental management.

Here are some of the conferences we recommend:

• Sustainable Packaging Forum - September 11-13, 2012  
• The American Center for Life Cycle Assessment - September 25-27, 2012   
• American Institute of Chemical Engineers - October 28-November 2, 2012
• Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry - North America - November 11-15, 2012
•  Sustainability in (Bio) Pharmaceuticals - November 11-14, 2012
• Ecobalance - November 20-23, 2012
• International Conference of Life Cycle Assessment - March 24-27, 2013 
• Conference on Life Cycle Management - August 25-28, 2013

3-hour course to prepare students to critique their internal LCA reports

Parameters - September 12

To give students hands-on experience developing and using parameters in the SimaPro LCA software.  

Modeling Recycling in LCA - September 17 & 19

To give students an understanding of the procedures/methods being used to best allocate for different recycling scenarios. 

This is a two part, six hour online providing hands-on experience learning the SimaPro software and reviewing the basics of life cycle assessment (covered in our Introduction to LCA course).

To prepare students to critique their corporate LCA reports. To demonstrate to participants how to promote their findings with persuasive LCA reports that follow ISO 14040/14044 requirements for transparent, fair, complete and accurate reporting.  

Methods for evaluating the Social and Economic Pillars of Sustainability - October 9

To introduce students to methodologies used to assess societal impacts as well as economic impacts in a sustainability context.

Practical LCA in PackageSmart - October 16

To introduce students to PackageSmart and provide practical experience applying the LCA methodology as defined in ISO 14040/14044. 

Introduction to LCA and SimaPro* (Seattle, WA) - October 23-24

To introduce students to SimaPro and teach the methodological details as standardized in the ISO 14040/14044 LCA methodology.   

End of Life Beginning - October 30

To give students an understanding of how to correctly build and model product stages in the SimaPro LCA software. 

Interpretation - Oct 30, 31 & Nov 1
To explain the methodological details required to interpret an LCA study, so as to steer the study and provide robust conclusions/recommendations.  

ecoinvent3: Unleashing the Power - November 1
Water Footprint and Water Use Assessment* (Portsmouth, NH) - Nov 6 & 7
To provide participants with the knowledge to perform a water footprint based on Life Cycle Thinking.   

ISO Compliant Report Writing* (Portsmouth, NH) - November 7

To explain and demonstrate how to fairly, completely and accurately report LCA results to both internal and external audiences.  To prepare students to write an LCA report for critical review. 

Incorporating LCA Into Your Package Design Workshop* (Portsmouth, NH) - November 13

Introduction to LCA - November 15

To introduce students to the concept of life cycle thinking, and the ISO standard methodology for conducting a LCA.  

Impact Assessment Methods - November 27

To explain the methodology for how environmental impacts are evaluated in a life cycle assessment (LCA) and to provide the basic knowledge required for interpreting LCA results. 

Customizing an Impact Assessment Method - November 29

To give students hands-on experience building a custom impact assessment method in SimaPro. 

Practical LCA in PackageSmart - December 4

To introduce students to PackageSmart and provide practical experience applying the LCA methodology as defined in ISO 14040/14044.  

Communicating LCA Results - December 11

3-hour course to prepare students to critique their internal LCA reports