The life cycle assessment (LCA) process evaluates the environmental impacts of a product or service over its entire life, from raw materials to manufacture, use, and disposal. This information can then be used to assess trade-offs and identify opportunities for improvement. Life Cycle Assessment for Businesses aim is to increase resource efficiency and reduce liabilities. It covers all environmental impacts arising during production, the usage phase, and disposal, as well as the connected upstream and downstream processes such as the extraction and production of raw materials, auxiliaries, or fuels. LCA is a popular tool for evaluating waste management systems, as it allows for a comparison of the impacts of different options.
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what does the term Life cycle assessment mean? / Definition
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) assesses a product’s or service’s environmental effect. LCA is a well-developed and extensively used approach for determining the resources utilized and the environmental consequences associated with a product or service throughout its entire life cycle. The notion of life cycle assessment refers to the evaluation of a product or service at each step of its existence, beginning with the extraction of raw materials and ending with the disposal or end of the product or service life. The life of a product can be broken down into five stages: raw material acquisition; manufacturing; transport/distribution; use and sale; and disposal/recycling.
life cycle assessment Variant Types
There are a variety of life cycle evaluations depending on product or service phases, like determining where the system boundary is, which marks the starting and end point of the entire life cycle. To decrease assessment complexity, only one value-added step in the manufacturing chain is sometimes examined. There are several LCA variants based on the product lifecycle.
Cradle to Grave
Cradle to Grave is the complete life cycle assessment that includes the environmental impact of a product or service from the stage of extracting the raw materials to the stage of disposal of the product or service. This form of LCA considers all inputs and outputs across the whole life cycle.
Cradle to Gate
Cradle to Gate is the partial life cycle assessment as it considers the environmental implications and resources utilized until the point at which the product is manufactured (at the factory gate). The usage and reuse of goods, as well as the product’s end of life, are not addressed. Most business-to-business interactions involving environmental product declarations include a “cradle-to-gate” life cycle assessment. This assists both parties in understanding the effects and number of resources received.
Cradle to Cradle
Within the Circular Economy, this concept is mentioned frequently. It is a variation on the cradle-to-grave approach that replaces the disposal stage with recycling which makes the material usable for yet another product. This makes it a circular system.
Gate to Gate
Gate to Gate is occasionally used in product lifecycle assessment with several value-adding procedures in the middle. To minimize assessment complexity, just one value-added step in the production chain is evaluated. These evaluations can eventually be combined to form a higher-level life cycle assessment.
Well to Wheel
Well to Wheel is a partial life cycle assessment built exclusively for fuel transportation. It plays a role in measuring overall energy consumption and energy emissions in both upstream and downstream stages, providing a full picture of the actual quantity of emissions. Upstream means making and processing gasoline, while downstream means the point where a vehicle starts to run.
We saw that there are various LCA types that can be used for different types of supply chains, depending on the product. An LCA should be considered for both product and service-based businesses as it is important to look at the entire life cycle. This could have a number of positive impacts on the business, such as increased efficiency, improved morale, and better decision-making. Let us focus now on, How it will be helpful and why it will be more and more important in the coming years?
How can an Life cycle assessment positively influence your company?
LCA is an important tool for businesses that want to operate in a more sustainable way. By conducting an LCA, businesses benefits reduce their environmental impact. It can not only help businesses save money by identifying ways to reduce waste and improve efficiency. But also help businesses become more environmentally responsible and improve their reputation with consumers. LCA can help businesses make better product decisions by providing a comprehensive view of the product’s life cycle. The potential areas where LCA can have a positive influence within the business are listed below in detail.
Product Design and Development
It helps companies develop sustainability or CSR strategies by providing data on past performance. The LCA approach is used in enhancing product design and development to improve choices made about materials, technologies, design criteria, and recycling. The use of LCA in business can not only help understand the impact of a product or service but also help identify better alternatives among products and services.
Supply Chain
LCA can improve and strengthen the whole supply chain by identifying the control zones that can help in the procurement of materials, reduction of material usage, or finding material substitutes. This also reflects on risk management while gathering information on various impact categories.
Marketing and Sales
With the current demand from customers for more sustainable products, LCA can help achieve benchmarking, thus helping in marketing and sales. This can be achieved via Environmental Product Declarations, with the key results of an LCA. This leads to fulfilling corporate sustainability and building brand credibility.
Policymaking and Strategic Management
To make effective strategic decisions that will have a positive impact on the environment, top management support is necessary. This is why every LCA must convey valuable information to the senior management level.
Waste Management
Last but not least, LCA looks at the whole life cycle of a product, from when it is made to when it is thrown away. Waste Management uses LCA to figure out how different choices and procedures affect the environment.
It is widely recognized as the most comprehensive and systematic way to evaluate the sustainability of a product or process. Now that we have learned how LCA can bring positive changes in Businesses. We can move on to learn what are the phases of LCA and how they are done? What are the steps, experts follow for Life Cycle Assessment?
LCA methodology phases
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardised methodology. ISO 14040:2006 defines LCA “principles and framework,” while ISO 14044:2006 states LCA “requirements and provides guidelines”.
Based on ISO 14040 LCA Framework (Curran, 2006)
LCA is based on four main phases.
Goal and Scope
In goal definition, the questions that need to be answered are
- Why do you want to do a life cycle assessment?
- For whom is this LCA meant?
- What is the product being studied in the life cycle analysis?
It is important to have a clear scope when conducting a study so that the research is focused and achievable. The scope defines some of the most basic elements, such as
- Product System
- System boundary
- Functional Units
- Flows
Inventory Analysis
Inventory analysis involves collecting data and doing calculations to figure out how much energy and materials are needed for, and produced by, a product system. All relevant factors are taken into account, both environmental inputs and outputs of a product or service. Different data collection methods can be used depending on the required quality of the data, such as on-site data collection, literature research, or database data. At this stage, the data is collected through data collection sheets. The stakeholders in the company who have access to the data fill out the data sheets. In line with the defined scope, the amount of energy and raw materials used, emissions into the air, water, and soil, and solid waste made by the product or service over the course of its entire life are all calculated.
Impact Assessment
Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is a process of identifying and analyzing the potential impacts that the system under study produces on the environment. The starting point for LCIA is the information obtained in the inventory phase. Therefore, the quality of the data obtained is a key issue in this assessment.
LCIA is a process that is generally comprised of four distinct steps
Classification: Data obtained from inventory analysis is clustered into various groups depending on different environmental impact categories, such as
- Eutrophication
- Ozone depletion
- Photochemical smog
- Fossil fuel depletion
- Acidification
- Human toxicity
- Ecotoxicity
- Climate change
Characterisation: A combined outcome is obtained for every impact category included in LCIA, in each unit of measure.
Normalization: Reporting the combined data to a broader data set or situation to understand it better.
Weighting: Using standards-based numerical factors, the normalized values are turned into results.
Interpretation – life cycle assessment for businesses
This is the final stage of LCA, where the results obtained are presented in a holistic manner, highlighting the key causes of impacts and options for mitigating these impacts. Interpretation involves a review of all stages of the LCA process to check for consistency of assumptions and data quality in relation to study objectives and scope. Finally, the decisions, shortcomings, and suggestions are proposed.
However there is often lack of comprehensive data, which is a point to highlight as the whole process of impact calculation is data based. The more detailed data we have, the detailed analysis can be done. This is where a simplified LCA can be done. A simplified LCA is a comprehensive assessment of a product or system that covers its entire life cycle, from cradle to grave with the use of generic datasets to evaluate the environmental impact of a product or system throughout its life cycle. It is not only important for big enterprises but also small and medium scaled enterprises.
There no doubt that LCA is an important tool for making informed decisions about the sustainability of products and services. By quantifying the environmental impacts of a product or service, LCA can help decision-makers to choose the most sustainable option.
Here are list of LCA tools in the markets which can be explored
- openLCA (Free)
- Ecochain
- Sphera LCA (GaBi)
- OneClickLCA (Free Student License)
- Earthster (Free Community Plan)
Want to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment for your business ?
