LC IT-Age

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides the scientific method to assess the environmental impacts of products, services, or technologies “from cradle to grave”. Today, companies use life cycle assessment and approaches based on it, such as the carbon footprint or the Green House Gas Protocol, both for internal sustainability management and for external reporting and communication. However, the underlying modelling is challenging and time-consuming, as it requires data for the entire life cycle from raw material extraction through production and use to disposal or recycling. Great hopes of simplifying this modelling are therefore associated with information technologies (IT). However, life cycle modelling is not just an IT task, but must provide meaningful and valid findings and indicators for decision-makers and stakeholders. This area of interplay between data processing/data management, methodology/modelling and recipients in society and politics will be worked on in the research project “Faster, easier, better? Life Cycle Modelling in the Information Age” in an interdisciplinary research approach.

The Department of Material Flow Management and Resource Economics (Prof. Liselotte Schebek), the Department of Data Management (Prof. Carsten Binnig) and the Department of International Relations (Prof. Markus Lederer) will work together on a roadmap for life cycle assessment in the information age, which will show companies new possibilities for action to use data processing for improved sustainability management and thus enable more efficient and targeted management in the company towards greater resource efficiency and climate protection. The project is funded by the Sustainability Hub of Merck and TU Darmstadt and will test the developed methodologies in a pilot study in cooperation with Merck.