Friday, May 16, 2008

Quantifying the impact of materials on the environment






This website has an interesting overview of sustainability from a materials perspective, including the beginnings of a method for calculating the "Impact" of a material.


Their project, called Okala, http://www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/ecosection/okala.html is currently updating its list of calculated “impact” values for hundreds of materials and processes. For example, one assigns a value of 140 to a product if the material used is aluminum, while switching to the use of ABS plastic (which takes less energy to process in the raw form) brings the impact down to 47.


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