7/27/2019 okala.pdf
1/42
Okala Impact FactorsNorth American single-figure process values
for impact assessment
Philip WhiteAssistant Professor, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Chair, Ecodesign Section, Industrial Designers Society of America
2007 InLCA Conference, Portland Oregon USA October 2007
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
2/42
Okala Impact FactorsNorth American single-figure process valuesfor impact assessment
Motivations
Structure of Okala assessment methodology
Process input/output inventory data
Heuristic applications
Needs of system developers
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
3/42
Motivations
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
4/42
Motivations for Okala Impact Factors
The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)supports the Design Professions to become more
ecologically responsible.
We worked within the IDSA/EPA Partnership,administered through the EPA Design forEnvironment Office, to develop applied LCA methods
for the Design profession.
Okala means life-giving energyin indigenous Hopilanguage; it honors indigenous wisdom about theintegral relationship between humans and the naturalworld.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
5/42
Motivations for Okala Impact Factors The environmental performance of products and systems is determined
early in the design process. Therefore, Product Development Teams and
designers need comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment methods that arefast and easy to use.
The methods should minimize data uncertainties while offering a widerange of materials and processes required by the product development
processes of various industries.
North American enterprises prefer a North American LCA methodology.
The LCA method would be used inside companies, not for public
assertions.
The method should be applicable in educating designers, engineersand business managers about applied LCA.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
6/42
Structure of Okala
assessment methodology
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
7/42
Structure of Okalaassessment methodology
Single figure score values are faster and easier to use than multi-attribute scores, especially for complex systems that include manymaterials and processes.
Process LCA inventory data is increasingly available for a diverse
range of materials and processes that design teams use. Recently developed North American characterization methods,
normalization data and weighting values are available.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
8/42
Structure of Okalaassessment methodology
The Okala impact factors use the following LCA components:
Characterization: TRACI 1
Normalization: US EPA 2
Weighting: NIST 3
1. Bare, J ane, et al, The Tool of reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other EnvironmentalImpacts (TRACI),J ournal of Industrial Ecology, Volume 6, number 3-4, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002
2. Bare, J ane, Gloria, Tom, and Norris, Greg, Development of the Method and U.S. NormalizationDatabase for Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainability Metrics, Environmental Science and
Technology, Vol. 40, NO. 16, 2006
3. Lippiatt, Bobbie, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Presentation of BEES draftweighting values, InLCA Conference, Washington DC, 2006
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
9/42
Okala impact categories
Okala employs the 2006 version of
TRACI, which no longer includeshabitat alteration. It splitshuman cancerand human non-
cancer health effects which werepreviously combined in one category.
Okala refers to this last category ashuman toxici ty, and refers to theTRACI criteria air pollutants categoryas human respiratory.
Okala excludes indoor air pollut ionbecause it involves double-counting.
Okala excludes water use becausethere is not an effective global
characterization method for thisregionally defined impact category.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
10/42
Why use normalization for Okala?
We use normalization values
(developed by the US EPA)because this harmonizes thedivergent units of each of theimpact categories.
Once the impacts from the differentcategories are in similar units(unit-free) they are summed todeliver a single figure score.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
11/42
Why use weighting for Okala?
By using weights of equal value
(not weighting) we do not avoid thesubjectivity that is associated withweighting. Deciding to use equalweighting of each impact categoryis as subjective a decision as
assigning unequal weighting values.
Okala weighting values weredeveloped by NIST. NIST is arecognized US authority on science
and technology; the NISTnormalization values are the mostlegitimate values for the TRACImethod that are currently available.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
12/42
Okalaprocess input/output
inventory data
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
13/42
Okala inventory data selection criteria
Criteria for selecting process input/output inventory data:
1. North American electricity data (amended to include CO2 emissions)
2. Most detailed and thoroughly documented data (usually Ecoinvent data)
3. One data source for families of materials or processes will be compared to eachother (example: landfill and incineration data, Ecoinvent)
4. If data sets had equal levels of detail, North American data preferred
5. Sole source data for material or process data requested by designers,
even if with a low level of detailed documentation.
6. Timeframe is large, 1980 2005
7. ISystemboundaries exclude 4th and higher order impacts: production ofmanufacturing equipment, construction of factories or transportation infrastructures
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
14/42
Okala inventory data sources
155
15
24
982
8 814
EcoinventEcoinvent+
Delft U.
BUWALFranklin
Franklin+
OrbPre'
APME
US LCI+ amended
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
15/42
Okala Impact Factor materials and processes
polymers
polymer processing
metals
metal processing
ceramics
plant, animal products
paper + print
fuels
other materials
power
transport
incineration
landfill
Okala impactfactors were
developed for
230 materials
and processes.
We also offerglobal warmingpotentials of eachof these in CO2
equivalencies.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
16/42
New materials and processes www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/ecosection
Okala impactfactors weredeveloped for230 materialsand processes.
2004 Survey of Practicing Designers
95 practicing product designers reported thatthe they needed factors for the followingmaterials and processes. We locatedinventory data for these and include them in
the 2007 Okala Impact Factors.
fiberboard particleboard
carbon fiber epoxy
glass-filled nylon acrylicTitanium detergent
local water imported water
Aluminum forging Aluminum casting
powder coating Li-ion batteries
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
17/42
Amended inventory data
Recycled thermoplastics
Ecoinvent did not offer data for recycled thermoplastics.Franklin data, which was of a lower quality, did offerrecycled thermoplastics data,
The Okala inventory data for recycled plastics was madeby taking the difference between the Franklin primary andsecondary thermoplastic data and subtracting that fromthe respective Ecoinvent thermoplastic data.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
18/42
Economically extrapolated impact factors
Gold and Silver
The Okala Impact Factors for Gold were extrapolated and for silverwere extrapolated from the Okala Impact Factors of Palladium andPlatinum. March 2007 prices for all of these precious metals were usedfor this extrapolation. The factors are rounded to two significant figures.
Platinum Gold Palladium Silver
US$ / lb. 16000 8500 400 200
impact factor millipoints / lb. 260,000 200,000 140,000 140,000
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
19/42
Economic allocation
Some materials had multiple products, so we used economicallocation to proportion the share of lifecycle impact to the share
of economic value of the various products.
J eroen B. Guine, ReinoutHeijungs and Gjalt Huppes,Economic Allocation: Examplesand Derived Decision Tree,International J ournal of LCA,(1) 23 33 (2004)
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
20/42
Economic allocation
Sheep wool
Inventory data (US LCI database) for theentire lifecycle of a sheep showedsurprisingly high from methane productionwith subsequent global warming effects.
Economic data indicated that over thelifecycle of a wool producing sheep, muttoncomprises roughly 2/3 of the economicvalue and wool comprises 1/3.
The Okala Impact Factor for wool was thusestimated to be 1/3 of the impacts of theentire sheep over its lifecycle.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
21/42
By-product non-allocation
Bovine leather
Inventory data (Delft U.) for production ofbovine leather only included the emissions fromprocessing the leather after butchering. Thedata implied that that beef would be produced
regardless of the economic value of the leather,(that leather is a by-product), so economicallocation is unnecessary.
The by-product opt-outrule for not using
economic allocation is inconsistent. We needconsistent allocation rules that apply equally toall products and systems.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
22/42
Processes recommended to avoid
We took an editorial stance that the following materialsshould be avoided by system and product developers:
Nickel-Cadmium batteries
Water from underground aquifers that are dropping
Natural rubber from non-sustainable certified sources
Tropical wood from non-sustainable certified sources
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
23/42
Unexpected results: municipal landfill
The following materials had considerably larger impactsin municipal landfills than in production. These large(X8) impacts are from ecotoxicity, human toxicity andhuman cancer.
Okala Impact millipoints/lb
material Production Landfill
Aluminum, primary 130 1000
Cardboard, primary, unbleached 10 85
Paper, primary, bleached 11 36
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
24/42
Unexpected results: municipal incineration
Okala Impact millipoints/lb
material Production Incineration
Aluminum, primary 130 860Copper, primary 320 5600
Lead, primary 5200 150000
steel, primary 25 210
LDPE, HDPE, GPS, PP 10 ~13 20
EPS 17 23
The following materials had considerably larger impactsin municipal incinerators than in production. Theselarge impacts are also from ecotoxicity, human toxicityand human cancer. Impacts from dioxin production in the
incineration process were surprisingly small.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
25/42
Heuristic applications
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
26/42
OkalaModules areorganized in
four sections.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
27/42
Okala curricula:
Course guide64 page full-color guide for students
19 module presentationsIn PowerPoint
Instructors guidePractical advice for each module
Used in more than 50 collegesof design in North America
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
28/42
LCA for industrial designers
Teaching objectives:
1. Quickly teach students to understandhow to model ecological performance,
and understand how key variablesdirectly affect ecological performance
2. Sequentially work on more complexprojects to understand more complex
applications and comparisons
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
29/42
LCA for design students
1st assignment:
Bill of materials provided
We supply the bill of materials fora product with packaging, includingpower usage and functional unit.Students estimate product lifetime
(total hrs. of system use) andcomplete the assessment in Okalaimpact millipoints/ hour of use.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
30/42
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
31/42
LCA for design students
2nd assignment:
Redesign existing system
Students disassemble a product such
as a hand-tool, and create a bill ofmaterials from scratch for the referenceassessment.
As with the previous assignment, they
redesign the system to explore ways toimprove its ecological performance.
They explore the most appropriatefunctional unit for this assessment.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
32/42
LCA for design students
3rd assignment:
Compare to combined systems
By researching trends in behavior and
technology, students design newsystems that do not have obviousprecedents. To enable a comparativeassessment, students construct a
competitor product to assess, oftenby combining dissimilar systems.
Assessmentof this monitor
conceptrequired thecomparisonto a combinedhandheld PDA
and a bedsidemonitor.
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
33/42
Needs of systemdevelopers
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
34/42
Developer information needs
There are yet many processes requested
by the 2004 designers survey for whichwe seek process inventory data to makeOkala Impact Factors:
Indian electr icity Chinese electr icity
PLA-plastic recycled nylon fabric
bio-diesel cellulosic ethanol
corn ethanol Ni-metal hydride bat.
marble electronic components
granite open-air incineration
cattle low-quality land-fills
silicone rubber electronic componentsbamboo
www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/ecosection
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
35/42
Okala Impact Factor materials and processes
polymers
polymer processing
metals
metal processing
ceramics
plant, animal products
paper + print
fuels
other materials
power
transport
incineration
landfill
Okala impact
factors for 230materials andprocesses
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
36/42
Lack of data on incineration
polymers
polymer processing
metals
metal processing
ceramics
plant, animal products
paper + print
fuels
other materials
power
transport
incineration
landfill
We lack incinerationdata for the 75% of
burnable materials
that we haveproduction data for.
Materials that can be incinerated
Materials for which wehave incineration data
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
37/42
Lack of data on land-filling
polymers
polymer processing
metals
metal processing
ceramics
plant, animal products
paper + print
fuels
other materials
power
transport
incineration
landfill
We lack land-fil l
data for the 85%
of materials thatwe have production
data for.
Materials that can be landfilled.
Materials for which we
have land-fill data
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
38/42
2008 Funding Priorities
National ScienceFoundation
$6.4 bil lion
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
39/42
2008 Funding Priorities
$6.4 bil lion
EnvironmentalProtection Agency
$7.2 billion
National ScienceFoundation
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
40/42
2008 Funding Priorities
$6.4 billion $7.2 billion
Process InventoryData Research
0
EnvironmentalProtection Agency
National ScienceFoundation
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
41/42
Okala Impact FactorsNorth American single-figure process valuesfor impact assessment
Improve Okala assessment methodology
Expand the range of materials and processes
Refine methods to teach LCA to system developers
Okala design guide
7/27/2019 okala.pdf
42/42
Special thanks to:
J ane Bare of the US EPA
and Michiel Oele of PreConsultancy, NL
Philip White
Assistant Professor
College of Design and School of Sustainability
Arizona State University
O aa desg gude
www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/ecosection