The challenge of our time is the greening of products. Different tools and concepts to support this process have been developed in the past decade. Among others, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) appears as one of the most instructive management instruments for gaining insight into product-related environmental impacts and for supporting an effective integration of environmental aspects in business and economy. Research on LCA was and still is focused on improving the methodology. In fact, the "LCA technique" has significantly improved over the last few years. However, this research progress did nearly not stress the application context of LCA and its embodiment into business and industry. This is precisely the primary focus of the present book. Based on the empirical information of a large survey and of 20 company case studies, the book describes the set of applications and uses, as well as the dynamics of the adoption and integration patterns of LCA within business and industry.

The present volume entitled "Perspectives in Turbulence Stud ies" is dedicated to Dr. Ing. E. h. Julius C. Rotta in honour of his 75th birthday. J. C. Rotta, born on January 1, 1912, started his outstanding career in an unusual way, namely in a drawing office (1928 - 1931). At the same time he - as a purely self taught perso- took a correspondence course in airplane construction. From 1934 to 1945 he worked in the aircraft industry on different subjects in the fields of flight mechanics, structures, air craft design, and aerodynamics. In 1945 he moved to Gottingen and worked from that time at the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, now DFVLR) and the Max-Planck-Institut fur Stromungsforschung (1947-1958), interrupted only by a stay in the U. S. at the Glenn L. Martin Company (1954 - 1955) and a visiting professorship at the Laval University in Quebec, Canada (1956). Already during his activities in industry, Dr. Rotta discovered his special liking for aerodynamics. In Gottingen, he was attracted by Ludwig Prandtl's discussions about problems associated with turbulence and in particular his new contribution to fully developed turbulence, published in 1945. At that time, W. Heisenberg and C. F. v. Weizacker pub lished their results on the energy spectra of isotropic turbu lence at large wave numbers. Since that time his main research interest in reasearch has been in turbulence problems."

1.1 Life Cycle Assessment (LeA): a fascinating and sophisticated tool The greening of the economy is not a new task, but it is a challenge for which a lot of tasks still have to be done. It is known that the main source of environ mental deterioration by industry is not any more the chimneys and other process related emissions, but the products and services produced. Products are regarded as carriers of polIution: they are not only a potential source of polIution and waste during their use; they are also a cause of resource depletion, energy consumption, and emissions du ring their life starting with the extraction of the raw materials and ending with their disposal (i.e. connecting production and consumption stages). The challenge of these decades is now the greening of products and services. The new focus on products (cp. OosterhuislRubik/ScholI 1996) was introduced as a policy approach of shared responsibility in which different actors are in volved along the life-cycle of a product, each having specific responsibilities."