The second issue is related to the fact that a prerequisite in LCA
is that the functionality (‘functional unit’) and the quality of the
alternative solutions must be the same (you cannot compare apples
and oranges in the classical LCA). In cases of product design and
architecture, however, this prerequisite seems to be a fundamental
flaw in the application of LCA: the designer or architect is aiming at
a better quality (in the broad sense: including intangible aspects
like beauty and image), so the new design never has the same
quality. In these cases, the traditional LCA approach is not suitable
for environmental benchmarking. In these cases however, it does
make sense to compare the design alternatives on the basis of the
eco-costs/value ratio (EVR) where the value is the perceived
customer value (the willingness to pay, WTP), and where the ecocosts
is a prevention based single indicator in LCA. Next section
describes the model of the EVR and the concept of eco-efficient
value creation in more detail.