L 144/16
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
23.5.2022
Human toxicity - non cancer – EF impact category that accounts for the adverse health effects on human beings caused by the intake of toxic substances through inhalation of air, food/water ingestion, penetration through the skin – insofar as they are related to non-cancer effects that are not caused by particulate matter/respiratory inorganics or ionising radiation.
Independent external expert – competent person, not employed in a full-time or part-time role by the commissioner of the EF study or the user of the EF method, and not involved in defining the scope or conducting the EF study.
Indirect land use change (iLUC) – this occurs when a demand for a certain land use leads to changes, outside the system boundary, i.e. in other land use types.
These indirect effects may be mainly assessed by means of economic modelling of the demand for land or by modelling the relocation of activities on a global scale.
Input flows – product, material or energy flow that enters a unit process.
Products and materials include raw materials, intermediate products and co-products.
Intermediate product – output form of a unit process that in turn is input to other unit processes which require further transformation within the system.
An intermediate product is a product that requires further processing before it is saleable to the final consumer.
Ionising radiation, human health – EF impact category that accounts for the adverse health effects on human health caused by radioactive releases.
Land use – EF impact category related to use (occupation) and conversion (transformation) of land area by activities such as agriculture, forestry, roads, housing, mining, etc.
Land occupation considers the effects of the land use, the amount of area involved and the duration of its occupation (changes in soil quality multiplied by area and duration).
Land transformation considers the extent of changes in land properties and the area affected (changes in soil quality multiplied by the area).
Lead verifier – person taking part in a verification team with additional responsibilities, compared to the other verifiers in the team.
Life cycle – consecutive and interlinked stages of a product system, from raw material acquisition or generation from natural resources to final disposal.
Life cycle approach – takes into consideration the spectrum of resource flows and environmental interventions associated with a product from a supply-chain perspective, including all stages from raw material acquisition through processing, distribution, use, and end of life processes, and all relevant related environmental impacts (instead of focusing on a single issue).
Life cycle assessment (LCA) – compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle.
Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) – phase of life cycle assessment that aims to understand and evaluate the magnitude and significance of the potential environmental impacts for a system throughout the life cycle.
The LCIA methods used provide impact characterisation factors for elementary flows to aggregate the impact, to obtain a limited number of midpoint and/or damage indicators.
Life cycle inventory (LCI) - the combined set of exchanges of elementary, waste and product flows in a LCI dataset.
Life cycle inventory (LCI) dataset - a document or file with life cycle information of a specified product or other reference (e.g., site, process), covering descriptive metadata and quantitative life cycle inventory.
A LCI dataset could be a unit process dataset, partially aggregated, or an aggregated dataset.
Loading rate – ratio of actual load to the full load or capacity (e.g. mass or volume) that a vehicle carries per trip.
Material-specific – a generic aspect of a material.
For example, the recycling rate of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).