LT: Environmental Life-Cycle Assessment in the Service Industries

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9873582 Lave The objective of this research is to develop quantitative measures of the environmental impacts of selected service sector industries: trucking and courier services, wholesale and retail trade, hotels and other lodging places and educational services. The existing economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) approach will be employed to identify and quantify the environmental implications of these industries throughout the lifetime of their products and services, as well as to identify and quantify the direct and indirect economic, environmental and sustainablility implications of these industries. The material and energy inputs (nonrenewable and renewable resources) will be assessed, as well as the emissions and waste (toxic discharges, hazardous waste generation, criteria pollutant emissions, greenhouse gas discharges and ozone-depleting chemical releases) associated with the service economy. Opportunities for environmental improvements of service sector outputs will be evaluated with the objective of providing metrics and analysis tools that can help define industrial ecology in the service sectors. This grant is made pursuant to the joint NSF/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships Program 1998.***