One of the issues that has been hard to cope with in LCA is the problem of odorous emissions. Though odour is one of the major concerns for many industries working with putrescible organic matter (agriculture, municipal solid waste treatment, wastewater treatment, etc.) and others with volatile organic compounds (food manufacturers, textile manufacturing, etc.) little work was done to update methods for dealing with odour in an LCA framework since the 1990s.

But now some good news on this front: the February upgrade to the popular Gabi LCA software from Thinkstep includes odour potential characterisation factors. Called the “Odour Footprint”, this method for including fate and effect characteristics of odorants in LCA was developed recently by Greg Peters with colleagues from Chalmers, Copenhagen and Aarhus. This method is now made operational as a midpoint indicator in the Gabi software, and is integrated into the Professional and Ecoinvent databases when Gabi users update with the latest software service pack.

Greg Peters, Chalmers University of Technology

Text: Ulrika Georgsson