Frequently Asked Questions, FAQ

Welcome to our Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Discussion Forum FAQ and Community Guidelines page. We’ve compiled our frequently asked questions on primary knowledge base at https://consequential-lca.org, where you can find answers to the following topics:

  • Why and when use Consequential LCA?
  • How to define the Functional Unit in Consequential LCA?
  • What are Determining and Dependent Co-products?
  • How to identify Marginal Suppliers?
  • How to handle By-products, Recycling and Waste?
  • What about Multiple Determining Products?

If you have additional questions not covered in this FAQ, please post them on our discussion forum where our community of LCA experts can provide assistance.

How to Turn Off Forum Notifications

By default, you are set to receive email notifications when new topics are posted in the following categories:

  • General
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If you want to disable notifications from these categories, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Settings: Click on the user icon in the top-right corner of the forum page.
  2. Access Preferences: From the dropdown menu, select the figure in the bottom-right corner and select “Preferences”.
  3. Adjust Notification Settings: Go to “tracking”. Under the “Categories” section, locate the “Watching First Post” field.
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  5. Save Changes: Make sure to save your preferences before exiting the page.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you will no longer receive email notifications for new topics in the categories you’ve unselected.

Community Guidelines

At the Consequential LCA Discussion Forum, we value respectful and constructive discourse. Our community thrives when members collaborate in a professional manner. To maintain a positive environment, we ask all participants to follow these guidelines:

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, watching, muting and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

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