Photo of Ben Morelli

Ben Morelli

Senior Life Cycle Analyst

I came to ERG out of graduate school to pursue a career in life cycle assessment with the belief that sustainability has a concrete meaning, one that LCA can help define. To my knowledge, life cycle thinking is one of the best available approaches to assessing the success or failure of human systems and to guiding the evolution of these systems towards an improved balance of environmental and social needs with economic constraints.


Ben Morelli is a senior life cycle analyst with 10 years of experience performing life cycle assessments of technologies and processes related to water systems, waste management, building materials, and consumer products for public and private clients. Ben works primarily in the openLCA software platform and has expertise and experience scoping, developing, and publishing ISO-compliant LCA studies and Excel and web-based tools. As part of his work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he helps inform and optimize approaches to addressing emerging issues in the water and wastewater industry related to advanced nutrient removal, resource recovery, and water reuse. For the private sector, Ben develops streamlined approaches to accessing and organizing complex life cycle inventory data in order to inform internal decision-making and foster increased availability of these data in the public domain.

Ben holds a B.S. in ecological engineering with a focus in water resources from Oregon State University and a Master of Environmental Management in Industrial Ecology from Yale University’s School of the Environment. Ben was inspired by his childhood in rural Pennsylvania and John Todd’s concept of the living machine, a plant-based wastewater treatment system, to explore the intersection between nature and engineered systems. Within the framework of industrial ecology, he uses a systems perspective to inform holistic design and analysis. In his spare time, Ben snowboards, backpacks, and runs a small market garden near Portland Oregon.