Patent ID: 7219042

Claim:
An environmental impact estimation apparatus comprising: a storage device that stores information concerning a plurality of first objects to be reused and a plurality of second objects to be recycled; a modeling device that performs life cycle modeling to generate a life cycle model, the life cycle modeling including reading the information concerning the first objects and the second objects from the storage device, and selecting at least one of the first objects and second objects which are diverted to at least one new product from a recovery product using the information, and combining some of the first objects and the objects to fabricate the new product; a predicting device that predicts a supply quantity of at least one of the first and second objects using the life cycle model generated by the modeling device; and wherein the predicting device defines a period of using a product targeted for reuse by the life cycle modeling as a shorter value of a product worth life and a product useful life, and approximate-predicts a distribution of the number of manufacturer products targeted for reuse by using an average number of manufacturer products per unit period obtained by dividing the number of manufactured products by a manufacturing period; and wherein the predicting device defines a period of using a product targeted for reuse as a shorter value of the product worth life and product useful life by the life cycle modeling, and approximate-predicts a distribution of manufactured products in number by using a triangle distribution having its peak value during entry of a next generation model; and an environmental impact/cost estimating device that estimates environmental impact and cost to be burdened in the reuse or recycle from a prediction result obtained by this predicting device and outputs the estimated environmental impact and cost to a display device.