What is a Life Cycle Assessment?
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardised methodology for transparent and credible environmental accounting. It quantifies the environmental impact of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle.
An LCA looks at the inputs and outputs at each life cycle stage and translates them into potential environmental impacts. The results are then grouped into several impact categories. LCA studies form the basis of calculating Carbon Footprints, Environmental Product Declarations and Product Environmental Footprints.
This page provides an overview of the process of producing an LCA, including details of current standards applicable to LCA studies and support offered by Ecomatters.
Why conduct an LCA?
Consumers and governments are finding it increasingly important that businesses focus on their resource efficiency and social responsibility. This makes it advantageous for businesses to measure and market the environmental impacts of their products and services.
An LCA is a powerful tool for identifying “hotspots” along a supply chain. Hotspots are areas of high environmental impact, for example due to material use or energy consumption, clearly shown in the LCA results. This information can inform future decisions on more efficient alternatives, resulting in direct or long-term cost savings. Understanding the life cycle impact of products and services can also aid in setting impact reduction targets.
An LCA is a critical part of any sustainability strategy and supports a variety of calculations including:
- Carbon Footprint (CF)
- Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)
- Product Environmental Footprint (PEF)
- Eco-efficiency Analysis (EEA)
The results of an LCA can be used in many ways. For example:
- To report the environmental impact of your product to your stakeholders through a report or a commercial leaflet.
- To support your marketing department by providing useful environmental information which can strengthen your product value proposition.
- To identify the hotspots in the value chain of a product.
- To support future improvements in product design.
- To support an environmental claim (for example an EPD or self-declared claim).
An LCA contributes credible metrics to your company’s sustainability efforts and allows you to clearly show how your actions are improving the sustainability of your product portfolio.
LCA Standards: ISO 14040 and ISO 14044
The standards for producing an LCA are:
- ISO 14040 – covers the principles and framework of LCA.
- ISO 14044 – sets the detailed requirements and guidelines for performing an LCA.
For an LCA to be verified, the results are reviewed by a neutral third party. This way, the results can be compared to other studies and can be relied upon to show an accurate picture of environmental impact. It is these standards, the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, that ensure compliance. Since the standards make the LCA results reliable, businesses can confidently factor in the information for setting energy efficiency or emission reduction targets.
The goal and scope of an LCA
The goal and scope of an LCA determine the objective and boundaries of the LCA study. Having a clear goal covering the study’s purpose, audience and application ensures the study meets the expectations and requirements for its intended use.
The scope of the study defines the system boundaries, determining which life cycle stages are assessed. Typically, an LCA would include all life cycle stages. However, in some cases, the LCA can focus on the most relevant stages depending on its goal and scope. The most common terms to express which stages are included in an LCA are:
- Cradle-to-gate: An LCA which includes all life cycle stages from raw material extraction and supply, to the manufacturing (i.e. up to factory gate) of the product under study. Cradle-to-gate studies are commonly used to assess intermediate products (or materials). The LCA results can be aggregated to calculate the impacts of assemblies and final products.
- Cradle-to-grave: An LCA which includes all the life cycle stages from the raw material extraction and supply stage, up to the end-of-life treatment of the product (i.e. including manufacturing, transport to consumers, product use, transport to waste treatment locations, etc).
Most common types of LCA
Depending on the scope of the study and its intended application, e.g. internal vs external communication, the level of detail of an LCA can differ even though, according to the life cycle assessment frameworks and standards ISO 14040/ISO 14044, there is no differentiation among the types of LCA. In practice, LCAs can be divided based on their level of description: ranging from a high-level screening to a full in-depth assessment.
A screening LCA provides a high-level overview of the key impacts or “hot spots” of the different phases of a product life cycle. It provides sufficient environmental insights to identify and understand the main drivers of high impacts within the value chain, as well as the aspects that require deeper examination.
LCA screenings are useful for an organisation to evaluate the environmental footprint of its products. A screening study is used to identify opportunities for environmental impact reduction within the value chain, and also serves to obtain environmental knowledge about a product and thus support eco-design. LCA screenings are also used for internal communication, and for sharing environmental information with business partners.
This LCA is more detailed and descriptive than a screening study, and aims to provide a comprehensive and complete analysis of the product under study. Most of the time this type of LCA complies with ISO 14040/44 standards and may include a third-party review and verification.
In-depth LCAs are useful for an organisation to externally communicate (B2B, B2C) their environmental impact and to make environmental declarations and claims about their products. Examples of the latter are ISO type III environmental claims such as EPDs. Moreover, in-depth LCAs can also be used to make comparisons between products serving the same functions.
According to the ISO standards, when an in-depth LCA is completed with the purpose of making public comparative assertions and claims that an organisation’s product is environmentally better than a competitor’s, a comparative LCA is compulsory. Comparative LCAs have additional requirements to guarantee the full comparability of products and must include a critical review by an external review panel.
Key steps to performing an LCA
Conducting an LCA involves several key steps. The level of detail and effort for each step depends on the required accuracy and intended use of the results. Ecomatters has a long track record of supporting companies in many sectors with LCA projects, as illustrated in our case studies. We can advise and guide you through the process or handle the full assessment for you. Our LCA process typically follows these five steps:
Ecomatters Support
At Ecomatters, we have over 10 years of experience working in the field of Life Cycle Thinking and conducting assessments. We focus on determining the methodologies that fit your needs best and can help you with the preparation of product claims and environmental product declarations. We follow the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 guidelines and are proficient with the various types of assessment software (GaBi and SimaPro).
Life Cycle Assessment is a critical step in the development of a solid sustainability strategy, and Ecomatters can help you along the way. Schedule a call with one of our experts or contact us to see how we can help you develop effective sustainable strategies for your business.
LCA Services
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Max Sonnen
Brienne Wiersema
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