Is Economic value an Effective Proxy for Embodied Energy and Environmental Impact in Material Systems?

• Main Authors: Gregory, Jeremy (Contributor), Fredholm, Susan A. (Contributor), Kirchain, Randolph E., Jr (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Systems Laboratory (Contributor), MIT Energy Initiative (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2010-10-14T20:36:24Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

This paper uses economic value metrics to evaluate the retention of value of secondary materials and provides a framework for characterizing value throughout a material and product life-cycle. These economic value metrics are compared with analogous life cycle assessment metrics in order to determine the conditions under which economic value effectively represents environmental impact for EoL material recovery decision-makers. A comparison of these metrics using several different material types indicates that there is a strong correlation between LCA metrics and economic value metrics for most of the materials studied. However, there were a few cases in which the economic value metrics were poor indicators of the LCA metrics.