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Article: Assessment can't replace life-cycle thinking.(sustainability)
- Article from:
- Packaging Digest
- Article date:
- September 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As the packaging industry increasingly engages in discussions of metrics and scorecards to assess environmental performance, it is important to distinguish between two terms: Life Cycle Thinking and Life Cycle Assessment.
Life Cycle Thinking is a qualitative framework used to understand and assess systems. It has historically been applied to natural systems through fields like ecology, where we study the relationships between species and their habitats. More recently, in the field of industrial ecology, we have applied the framework of Life Cycle Thinking to industrial systems as a way to understand man-made systems and their interaction with the natural ...