Environmental News, 70 – The Product, Functional Unit and Reference Flows in LCA – Annex 1. Some important terms used in this document

The Product, Functional Unit and Reference Flows in LCA

Annex 1. Some important terms used in this document

In general, conformity with the terminology of the ISO standards (the 14040-series) has been sought.

A product substitution is a replacement of one product or group of products with another product or group of products. A product substitution can be defined as small, marginal or large according to the following definitions:

A product substitution is defined as small or marginal when it does not in itself affect the determining parameters of the overall market situation, i.e. the direction of the trend in market volume and the constraints on and production costs of the involved products and technologies. The consequences of the substitution can thus be assumed linearly related to the size of the substitution.

A product substitution is defined as large when it in itself affects the determining parameters for the overall market situation, i.e. the direction of the trend in market volume and the constraints on and production costs of the involved products and technologies.

An obligatory product property is a property that the product must have in order to be at all considered as an object of product substitution.

A positioning property is a property that is considered nice to have by the customer and which may therefore position the product more favourably with the customer relative to other products with the same obligatory product properties.

A market-irrelevant product property is a property that does not play a role for the customers preferences and therefore does not affect product substitutability, but may influence the reference flow (see below).

A market segment is defined in terms of clearly distinct requirements for obligatory product properties with a minimum of overlap to other segments, so that all products targeted for a segment are considered substitutable by the customers of this segment, while there should be low probability that a product targeted for another segment would be considered substitutable, implying that product substitution from segment to segment can be neglected.

A functional unit is a quantified description of the performance of the product systems, for use as a reference unit.

A reference flow is a quantified amount of product(s), including product parts, necessary for a specific product system to deliver the performance described by the functional unit.

A system expansion is the modification of the system boundaries to include all processes, which are significantly affected by the studied substitution.

The environment is the surroundings in which an organisation operates.

An environmental impact is any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, resulting from an organisation's activities or products.

Environmental exchanges are environmental inputs to a product system (resources), environmental outputs from a product system (emissions to air, water and soil) as well as environmental relations of a product system which are not directly connected to its inputs and outputs (e.g. land use, physical impacts, non-chemical aspects of occupational health, welfare of workers and domestic animals).