The Terms “Critical Review” and “Verification” Addressing Quality Assurance in Life Cycle Assessment and ISO Type III Declarations

Abstract

Quality assurance in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a conformity assessment against defined criteria that are suitable to reflect robustness and significance of the results. In LCA, “critical review” and “verification” are used for quality assurance.

The chapter interprets the quality assurance via critical review, the quality assurance via verification, and finally verification and PCR (product category rules) review.

“Critical review” was introduced in ISO 14040: 1997, adopted in ISO 14040:2006, ISO 14044:2006, that is, by the revision of ISO 14040: 1997, and specification is given in (ISO/TS 14071:2014).

In the context of quality assurance in LCA and related tools like ISO type III declarations according to ISO 14025:2006, occasionally the term “verification” is used. This term was significantly coined in Quality Management Systems and defined in ISO 9000:2015. The definition of verification from ISO 9000:2000, identical with the definition in ISO 9000:2015, was transferred to ISO 14025:2006. The verification approach and the peer review approach are different in methodology. The verification process leaves an extensive range of possibilities to define objective evidence. Every document, however, using the term “verification” must precisely define the requirements correlated with the respective objective evidences.

The basic idea of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) according to ISO 14025 is to provide liable and relevant information on environmental issues for companies in the chain management (Type III environmental declarations).