PARENT SESSION

6E - Life cycle management
Poster Hall
8:30 AM - Monday, 28 April 2003
Chair: Saur, K.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Frankl, P.², ²

(MOP/210) SETAC's North America Life-Cycle Assessment Advisory Group.

Dubreuil, Alain ¹, Fava, James², ¹ Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada² Five Winds International, West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States of America

ABSTRACT- The presentation will describe the SETAC LCA Advisory Group, which was established in 1991. The Advisory Group's mission was and is to advance the science, practice and application of LCA to reduce the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with products, packaging, processes and activities. The role of the Advisory Group and therefore of SETAC, is not to standardise methodology, but instead to leverage the scientific expertise of its membership to improve the practice of LCA. With the launch of the UNEP/SETAC Life-Cycle Initiative, the SETAC North American LCA Advisory Group agreed their primary focus would be to support the UNEP/SETAC Life-Cycle Initiative. To do so, the Advisory Group will: 1) Use SETAC's approach to workshop and stakeholder involvement processes, 2) Coordinate with other SETAC Groups (e.g., ERA AG), and 3) Serve as a facilitator, liaison, focal point and outreach to SETAC members (LCA, environmental risk assessment, and ecological assessment), non-SETAC experts (e.g., ecologists, human health risk assessors,), managers (decision-makers), and other organisations promulgating LCA The cooperation between UNEP & SETAC will continue to enhance the application of LCA and life-cycle thinking, or, in other words, to bring life-cycle thinking and LCA into practice.

Key words: life-cycle management, life-cycle assessment, UNEP, life-cycle thinking