Welcome to this discussion forum, number 81. I'm very excited about the topic, actually. It was also our idea to discuss this topic here. And I first want to a little bit introduce where we are here. So we are at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences

and more specifically at the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences. So we are about 200 people working here in 22 different research groups. We also have a Bachelor's in Environmental Engineering and there we have a course in life cycle assessment where about 20 people learn the basics of LCA

and the basics of how to use SemaPro. We also have extremely beautiful gardens. We there show our research. We also have some teaching that happens in the gardens and there are just a lot of very beautiful plants. So if you have time and lunch time, please have a look.

It's just right out there. I can do a tour. If you have time, I'll do a tour. So the question is a bit, we chose this topic of the service industry, but why should we discuss services?

So my name is Regula Keller. I'm part of the research group life cycle assessment and I have a very big support from the rest of our group which is situated both in the middle and on that side. So if you have any questions, you can always just ask my colleagues. Our research group also have different topics that we look at.

So we have a focus in both food but also in renewable energies. We also have a research project in phosphorus where we could take back phosphorus from waste management. So we have a very wide variety of research projects. If you want to know more, also just ask us.

But the question of today was why should we discuss services? Like healthcare, public services, ICT services, are they relevant? They surely are. So I just picked up some words about different groups

that say something about the service industry. So from the perspective of the AU, they are the main contributor to growth and employment and they are responsible for two-thirds of the value added. How is it in Switzerland? Is it also relevant there? You can guess. In Switzerland, there is a growing economic importance of services

but services are not only relevant in terms of economics. They're also relevant in terms of people employed. So more than half of the employed people work in the tertiary sector. And if you then look at foreign trade, I can assure you,

also services are relevant there. So more than one-third of foreign trade in Switzerland is from services. One example is TV broadcasting, right? I actually didn't know that, so that's why we have here a soccer player.

And now the question is how is it in LCA? So what happens there? Are they easy to analyze? I also have found something nice to say about it. So Gudkop said that the result of a service cannot always be easily expressed in terms of a functional unit.

And this is actually why we are all here. So today we look at different services and how they have been handled by different LCA experts. This is the overview of the session. So we start with an introduction. We then go to the ICT.

We have well-deserved breaks within, don't worry. Then we have healthcare services, public services, the lunch break, short presentations, and then modeling approaches that are a bit more special than standard approaches. And in the end, I'm very looking forward to this, we have discussion in groups. So let us have an open, interactive, and respectful discussion forum.

I'm really looking forward to it. And the first speaker will be Isabelle O'Connor. So she works as a project manager at ABP in the Department of Resources, Energy, and Climate.

She uses lifecycle assessment to support clients in improving their environmental footprint. She will present the environmental impact of the service sector in Switzerland.