THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Faculty of Engineering
GSOE9340 – Life Cycle Engineering
Assignment Two – Term 2-2025
Assignment weight: 30%
Due date: Friday, 18 July 2025 by 11:59pm
Submission: One report via Turnitin
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to develop an understanding of the second step of operationalizing the framework of LCE, which is the Planetary boundaries Life Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment (Pb-LCA) of a representative product for the organization you have used in Assignment 1. This will increase your familiarity with how the environmental impact and the absolute sustainability assessment are assessed and measured. As a result of
completing this assignment, you will be able to determine reference flow, input-output relations
between processes, background and foreground processes, goal and scope definition, and
environmental hotspots along the product life cycle, absolute sustainability assessment.
Task: The assignment will require week 1, 2 and 3 lectures. Therefore, you should attempt the
following tasks by using these lecture materials. In this assignment, you will use the product
you have identified, some of the results you have estimated in Assignment 1. It is expected that
you will search the internet for a relevant publication, which details the environmental impact
evaluation (LCA) of the selected product. You may search company reports and/or journals
such as International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Journal of Industry Ecology, Journal
of Cleaner Production, etc. As part of the submission, you must provide the article details in
your submission. If you have already involved in a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a product in
the past, you may use the results with proper documentation as evidence. By using the
information gathered:
1. Demonstrate the product life cycle, the reference flow, and the process flow and their Input-
outputs relation between processes as extracted from the literature and your background
knowledge. By using this, clearly explain the scope of the study, and map foreground and
background processes along to the product life cycle (5 points).
2. Based on the environmental impact assessment reference you have found, and the
information gathered in the previous steps (5 points):
a. Clearly detail the goal and scope of the study,
b. Functional unit,
c. Impact categories,
d. System boundaries,
e. Inventory analysis,
f. Impact assessment methodologies used,
g. Environmental impact databases used.
3. Provide a critical review of the information provided in questions 1 and 2 with respect to
ISO14040 and ISO14044 (10 points).
4. Identify environmental impacts (EI) and environmental hotspots and provide relevant
figures and charts to show the environmental hotspots (You must make sure that the study
includes the CO
2eq
footprint to use for further analysis), and the total environmental
footprint in terms of CO
2eq (
3 points).
5. Then compare this with the SoS of the product with and without volume growth that you
have estimated in Assignment 1 and present it in a graphical format with an emission
variability range. It is certain that the CO
2eq
The footprint estimated in this assignment will
differ from the estimated SoS values. Clearly explain the possible cause of this (4 points).
6. Estimate the Absolute Sustainability Ratio (ASR) and the ASR range on a graph and
discuss the results (3 points).
Note:
• You may make assumptions if you need one after clearly stating them.
• All tasks are not equal value.
Assessment Criteria:
• Clearly providing and citing the used references.
• Demonstrating the selected product life cycle, the reference flow, and the process flow
and their Input-outputs relation between processes.
• Showing foreground and background processes along to the product life cycle.
• Clearly explaining the goal and scope of the study, Functional unit, Impact categories,
System boundaries, Inventory analysis, Impact assessment methodologies used,
Environmental impact databases used.
• Critical review these with respect to the ISO14040 and ISO14044
• Showing environmental impact and providing relevant figures and charts to show the
environmental hotspots.
• In each step, clearly showing the calculations, if any, an