Evaluating Stormwater Management Devices the Role of Life Cycle Assessment

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Evaluating Stormwater Management Devicesthe
Role of Life Cycle Assessment

• Robbie Andrew1 and Eva-Terezia Vesely2
• 1 NZ Centre for Ecological Economics, Palmerston
  North
• 2 Landcare Research, Auckland

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Summary

• Life cycle assessment (LCA)
• Rain gardens
• Site
• Analysis
• Conclusions / Future work

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Todays Purpose

• Address the following
• General perception is that rain gardens are more
  env friendly
• Is LCA the tool for the job?
• Indirect effects and impacts are often ignored

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Life Cycle Assessment (1)

• Cradle to Grave
• ISO 14040 series

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LCA Sounds useful

• An objective approach
• ISO 14040
• Direct and Indirect impacts
• Bottom-up
• International data gathering effort

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LCA But

• Assumes linearity
• Production of 2kg of product impacts environment
  twice as much as production of 1kg
• System boundary critical
• Conclusions can strongly depend on how much you
  include in the analysis

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The 3 Stages of LCA

• Goal and Scope Definition
• Inventory Analysis
• Impact Assessment

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An Application

• Goal To compare the life-cycle environmental
  impact of a rain garden with that of an
  equivalent conventional stormwater device

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Study Site

• North Shore City
• Design incomplete difficulties with sloping
  terrain ? Cost

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Raingarden Life Cycle
Screenshot from GaBi 4
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Raingarden Production
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Raingarden Use
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Raingarden Disposal
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Conclusions / Future Work

• This is a Work in Progress
• Much of initial work complete
• Data collection to continue
• Monitoring data to be used
• Impact Assessment

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Acknowledgements

• Surya Pandey and Robyn Simcock of Landcare
  Research
• Barbara Nebel of Forest Research
• Foundation for Research, Science, and Technology