assessment of the environmental impacts deriving from the life cycle of a typical solar water heater

According to life cycle thinking, the environmental burden deriving from different life cycle stages of a product or a system, such as manufacturing, transportation, maintenance and landfilling should be taken into consideration while assessing its environmental performance. In that aspect, the environmental impacts deriving from the life cycle of a typical solar water heater (SWH) in Greece are analyzed and assessed with the application of relative life cycle assessment (LCA) software in this study. In order to examine various impact categories such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, ecotoxicity and so forth, the IMPACT2002+ method is applied. The aim of this study is to examine the life cycle stages, processes and materials that significantly affect the system under examination and to provide a discussion regarding the environmental friendliness of solar water heaters.