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ensure accuracy. Life-cycle assessments attempt to summarize the
environmental impacts of a product through its entire life-
cycle, from the extraction of the raw materials through
manufacturing, use, and disposal. Such information can serve as
the basis of a search for design alternatives to reduce the
environmental impact of a particular product or to compare
several different technologies designed to serve the same
function. Although simple in principle, life-cycle analyses can
be difficult to complete in practice because they require large
amounts of information and frequently involve assessments of the
relative importance of qualitatively different types of
environmental impacts (Field and Ehrenfeld; Hocking, this
volume). Comparing two alternatives that have qualitatively
different environmental impacts is one situation in w