ABSTRACT
Life-cycle thinking has led to a significant turn-of-the-century shift in thinking, both in the way products or processes are perceived as well as in the sharing of responsibility for their creation and use. Author of the following paper, Hélène Teulon, earned her PhD in Industrial Organisation from the École des Mines in Paris. Her speciality is the environmental analysis of automobile design, and she developed a life-cycle inventory for the USCAR consortium—which includes Chrysler, Ford and General Motors—in the first attempt by US car manufacturers to examine the environmental burdens associated with the total life-cycle of a car. She undertook a similar life-cycle inventory of a hypothetical generic car for JAMA, which comprises the Japanese auto-makers. She was Technical Director of the Paris office of Ecobilan when she wrote the following article. She joined the Sustainability Department at PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2000.
