History

LCA development in Australia began in the early 1990s, when Australia's mining and steel giant BHP Billiton undertook environmental assessments on their products and processes. 

Simultaneously, the Public Works Department in New South Wales began to work on LCA in public infrastructure and buildings. With the awarding of the 'green' 2000 Olympics to Sydney in 1993, more building product suppliers such as James Hardie and Pioneer began to consider the life cycles of their products.

In 1993, the Federal Government established a National EcoReDesign Demonstration Project, which drew heavily on LCA for the redesign of products from eight Australian manufacturers. 

This led to the first national conference on LCA in 1996, which highlighted the need for more public data in Australia. Around the same time, two Australian Cooperative Research Centres commenced LCA research and educational activities, with the aim of encouraging broader adoption of LCA practices.

The following year, a project to establish national LCA inventory data was launched, focusing on basic building and packaging materials, transport and energy. It attracted funding from the environment departments of the Federal Government and four State Governments (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia) and the Cooperative Research
Centre for Waste Management and Pollution Control.

Since this initial inventory work, data resources in Australia have improved, through publicly funded LCA projects and industry-based initiatives.  LCA now embraces a wide range of areas including waste management (landfill, material recycling, waste-to-energy), transport and fuels, packaging, buildings, raw materials, food and agriculture, process engineering, product design and Life Cycle Impact Assessment.

ALCAS grew out from an initiative of the Cooperative Research Centre for Waste Management and Pollution Control, which in 1996 began establishing regular LCA roundtables with participation from industry, government, academia and LCA practitioners.

Roundtables provided a forum for presenting LCA results and for discussing critical issues in LCA development. It was during these discussions that the group decided to formalise its structure and membership. ALCAS was then established in June 2001.