The (Dutch) Handbook on LCA provides a stepwise `cookbook' with operational guidelines for conducting an LCA study step-by-step, justified by a scientific background document, based on the ISO Standards for LCA. The different ISO elements and requirements are made operational to be `best available practice' for each step. The life cycle impact assessment methodology recommended is based on a midpoint approach covering all emission- and resource-related impacts, for which practical and acceptable characterization methods are available (Guinée et al., 2002). Best available characterization methods have been selected based on an extensive review of existing methodologies world-wide. For most impact categories a baseline and a number of alternative characterization methods is recommended and for these methods comprehensive lists of characterization and also normalization factors are supplied. Ecotoxicity and human toxicity are modeled adopting the multi-media USES-LCA model developed by Huijbregts (Huijbregts et al., 2000 and 2001). The Handbook provides characterization factors for more than 1500 different LCI-results, which can be downloaded at www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/ssp/projects/lca2.
Key Contact: Jeroen Guinée - email: Guinee@cml.leidenuniv.nl