ECOCOST: A Software Tool That Makes Life Cycle Assessment Evaluations Available for the Business Decision Makers

The complexity of environmental problem is characterised by the typical difficulty to find an unique quantitative measure for “being green”.

Environmental damage cannot easily be compared with parameters such as cost or time that are “hard” metrics.

However, techniques like Life Cycle Assessment should make it possible comparing products based on the basis of their environmental profile.

In this study a modelled approach that allows to integrate Life Cycle Assessment considerations within multi-criteria analysis methodology is described: this integration is clearly exemplified by a simple software tool called ECOCOST.

ECOCOST represents an effort to join different field of evaluation, other than environmental, to the Life Cycle Assessment: then environmental results emerged from LCA can be matched with other kind of evaluation, economical and technical in particular.