The USDA Life Cycle Assessment Digital Commons

Name of Commitment/Project

The USDA Life Cycle Assessment Digital Commons

Lead Agency/POC

USDA/Simon Liu (Director, National Agricultural Library)

Partners (government, non-government and whether open to others)

The US Environmental Agency, the US Department of Energy, GreenDelta of Germany, Interuniversity Research Centre for the Life Cycle of Products, Processes and Services of Canada, and a number of private organizations and universities have contributed data and support for the project.

Narrative Description (concise paragraph to include activities and outcomes)

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used tool that assesses potential environmental impacts for a given product, process, or activity throughout its entire life span. A complete LCA assessment provides a holistic, comprehensive assessment of a product’s impacts, from those associated with the inputs used in its production through to those arising from its consumption and disposal. LCA can be expanded to include impacts related to the economic and social pillars of sustainable development through economic valuations and measurement of social indicators such as labor, justice, and equity. Governments, industries and international organizations increasingly recognize the usefulness of LCA in analysing tradeoffs to improve resource efficiency, conservation, and the greening of the economy.

The USDA LCA Digital Commons is an open-access, comprehensive inventory of peer-reviewed, standard formatted US LCA data. It is USDA’s contribution to the collection, organization, management, dissemination, and preservation of LCA data for current and future public and private decision-making and research. EPA and DOE have supplied data in support of this effort.

Sustainable Development Categories (see next page)

Information and Communications Technology

Measuring Progress

Implementation Location(s)

United States

Metrics for Measuring Success

1) Initial posting of the open access Digital Commons

2) Maintenance and growth of the Digital Commons database.

Multimedia linkages (associated webpages, videos, etc.)

www.lcacommons.gov

Plan for Reporting Progress

Progress will be monitored via update website.