Key Points of Life Cycle Analysis

You are probably asking yourself what life cycle analysis has to do with interior design. The answer is: everything! Life cycle analysis, otherwise known as LCA, is the awareness of where a product comes from, what it takes to produce, how it gets broken apart and what happens as the end of its life. If you are concerned with sustainability or eco-conscience design in any way you should take the time to answer the question LCA with every purchase you make.

Let’s take a common household interior purchase, a sofa, and break down its LCA for better understanding of why this is such an important topic (at least I think so!).

When you purchase a sofa at your local furniture provider it has already lived a full life before it is delivered to you. First, all the individual components of the sofa have to come from somewhere. The frame, fabric, cushioning and fasteners all have an original harvest and production location – all before they are shipped separately to the final assembly location. So the more parts and pieces a furniture selection has, the more embodied energy it contains (see our blog “Embodied Energy – What Is It and What Does It Represent In My Home?” for more info about this term). So after considering the harvest location (where the material is found in its virgin form), the production location (where man-made materials are produced or where natural materials are turned into usable form) and the assembly location (where all the parts of the assembly are put together), next is the distribution location.

After the pieces of furniture is put to use – so our sofa has officially been crushed, re-fluffed, washed, drooled on and has a proper about of popcorn stuck in the cushions – you then have to ask the almighty question of what to do with it.

First, in regards to furniture, there is always the option to donate. This takes the sofa and puts it right back into use for the same purpose. There is limited energy for this use, just the trip in a pickup or a moving van.

The second option is to recycle what you can. This will require breaking apart all parts of the assembly. While recycling is a great choice, it is important to keep in mind that this does use energy to fulfill. All the individual parts have to be shipped to different location for processing and then shipped to become their next product.

The last option, I hate to even mention, is throwing the piece of furniture away. It’s sinful even to say.

In the end, the key to LCA is to consciously think about each purchase with an exit strategy. So, out of the stuff in your home right now, how much of it do you have an exit strategy for??

Embodied Energy – What Is It and What Does It Represent In My Home?

Simply put, embodied energy is the amount of total energy a tangible article houses. Energy, in this terminology, represents physical exertion, production, environmental growth effort, shipping, crating, recycling, and anything else that requires a form of effort to produce an object. The smallest of objects to the largest of buildings all contain embodied energy.

Heck, even the sweater I am wearing right now has embodied. It’s wool, so the energy used to feed a sheep, sheer the sheep, box the raw wool, ship it, mill the wool, spin to production fiber, ship again, dye the yarns, weave the sweater, ship the sweater, stock the sweater, my gas to get to the store, the department stores energy necessary to sell the sweater, bag the sweater, drive the sweater home and finally remove the tags and wear the sweater. Phew! Please notice I stopped here and I could go into what energy is needed to dry clean the sweater!

So in short, embodied energy of the total of all types of energy. This is such an important attribute to be aware of as an interior designer because it provides clarification and weight to all the decisions being made for an interior. All of a sudden, deciding on the arm chairs shipping from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Detroit became a better choice over the chairs shipping from Spain – at least in regards to the embodied energy attributes.

Having awareness of embodied energy not only assists you in making wise purchasing choices; it can also help guide you in what to do with the sweater when you are ready to pass it on. I believe when you remove yourself from your own reality for a second and put yourself in the shoes of an object (I know, odd concept), you can have clarity and really start to think about your purchases differently. As Americans we are consumers, but what if we all just made the conscience decision to consume less. Think about the overall impact you could have on embodied energy.

One of the best examples I like to use for reduced embodied energy are vegetables. Think about the energy difference between a cucumber bought at the grocery store versus one grown in your backyard… its an interesting concept.

What easy steps can you take to reduce the embodied energy surrounding you?