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Environmental life-cycle assessment

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 693–697 (2017)Cite this article

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Concerns about the planet's health call for a careful evaluation of the environmental impact of materials choices. Life-cycle assessment is a tool that can help identify sustainable materials pathways by considering the burdens of materials both during production and as a product.

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Figure 1: Example of LCA, related to the analysis of the environmental burden associated with automobile mass reduction through materials change.
Figure 2: Life-cycle global warming potential (GWP) of an interstate highway, constructed in the US, of Portland cement concrete and used for 50 years, expressed in kilotonnes of CO2eq per lane mile.
Figure 3: Allocation issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Randolph Kirchain, Jeremy Gregory and Elsa Olivetti are at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Randolph E. Kirchain Jr, Jeremy R. Gregory & Elsa A. Olivetti

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  1. Randolph E. Kirchain Jr
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  2. Jeremy R. Gregory
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  3. Elsa A. Olivetti
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Correspondence to Randolph E. Kirchain Jr.

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Kirchain Jr, R., Gregory, J. & Olivetti, E. Environmental life-cycle assessment. Nature Mater 16, 693–697 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4923

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