Towards the development of a salinity impact category for South African environmental life-cycle assessments: Part 1 - A new impact category

Abstract

Environmental life-cycle assessments conducted in South Africa to date have made use of published equivalency (or characterisation) factors for characterising ecotoxicity effects. These factors are calculated using environmental fate and effect models, and generate equivalency factors that are not necessarily valid for South African conditions. Furthermore, current models do not adequately characterise the effects of common ions associated with salinity impacts. Salinisation of South African water resources is of strategic concern, and the need for life-cycle assessments to be able to incorporate salinity effects is apparent. There are sufficiently clear cause-effect relationships between the sources and impacts of salinity, and impacts are sufficiently different in nature from existing categories to warrant a separate salinity impact category. A conceptual method is proposed for creating a new salinity impact category for life-cycle assessment and for calculating salinity equivalency factors. The proposed method meets the international requirements for creating new impact categories and it is recommended that the method be developed further.