A discussion on the availability of life-cycle assessment studies in New Zealand

• Published in: The international journal of life cycle assessment Vol. 23; no. 8; pp. 1708 - 1713
• Main Authors: Engelbrecht, Shaun, Ladenika, A. O., MacGregor, O. S., Maepa, Mpho, Bodunrin, Michael O., Burman, Nicholas W., Croft, Joel, Goga, Taahira, Harding, Kevin G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.08.2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Availability; Carbon; Carbon footprint; Commentary and Discussion Article; Earth and Environmental Science; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Economics; Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology; Environmental impact; Footprinting; Internet; Life cycle analysis; Life cycle assessment; Life cycles; New Zealand; Scientific papers; Search engines; Wool; New Zealand; New Zealand; Global reporting initiative; Water footprinting; Life-cycle assessment; Carbon footprinting
• ISSN: 0948-3349; 1614-7502
• DOI: 10.1007/s11367-018-1485-1

Purpose In order to understand the environmental impacts of various products, processes, or services, it should be possible to obtain life-cycle assessment (LCA) reports quickly and easily without having to delve into restricted access or hidden databases. The aim of this study is to assess the availability of environmental LCAs, water footprinting, and carbon footprinting studies conducted in New Zealand. Methods To review the quantitative availability of life-cycle assessment studies for New Zealand, simple online searches were performed using the Google and Google Scholar search engines. Additionally, ScienceDirect and Scopus were used to determine the availability of other peer-reviewed LCA-related reports. Results and discussion For the period under review, 20 documents were publicly available. Additionally, other searches conducted via ScienceDirect, Scopus and Google Scholar yielded a further 15 restricted documents. The results included data carbon- and water footprinting studies. The number of LCAs and carbon footprinting reports both exceeded those of water footprinting. Conclusions Over 35 studies were available through Internet searches. This number excludes wool which had six results (Scopus only) and many more through Google. These were not included due to possible repetition and miscounting of results.