What is a life-cycle assessment?

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) – sometimes called a cradle-to-grave analysis – is a systematic review of all the environmental impacts associated with a product throughout its lifespan.

From raw material extraction through production, use, and disposal, an LCA covers every stage of a product’s life. This assessment helps to understand the overall environmental footprint and identify opportunities for improvement.

Some of the benefits of an LCA are:

• Improved environmental awareness
• Better decision making, driven by informed product design, policy making, and strategy development
• Optimised sustainability efforts
• Compliance with environmental regulations and standards

Knowing more about your environmental impact can benefit your company across the board. This is particularly the case for departments that are able to take immediate action based on an LCA, including marketing and sales, product development, supply chain management, and executive management.

Cradle-to-grave: the 5 stages of a product life cycle

There are five stages of a product life cycle in LCA:

1. Raw material extraction
2. Manufacturing and processing of raw materials
3. Distribution and transportation of products
4. Use and maintenance of products by consumers
5. End-of-life (disposal or recycling of the product or its components)

The 4 phases of a life-cycle assessment

As defined in the ISO standard 14044, a life-cycle assessment consists of four key phases:

1. Definition of goal and scope

The first phase of an LCA is about defining the purpose of the study and its boundaries – in other words, what you want to analyse and how deep you want to go with your analysis.

This involves answering the following questions:

• What are you assessing? Define your functional unit (e.g. 1 kg of product) to standardise comparisons.
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• What is the purpose of the assessment? Are you looking to design greener products, do you want to have environmental information available, or is it about following regulations?
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• How extensive will your assessment be? Decide how much primary data you want to collect, and from which point on you will use secondary data.
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• Which guidelines and methods will you follow? For example, if you are looking to obtain certain environmental labels, you may need to follow industry-specific LCA standards.

2. Inventory analysis

Phase two, the inventory analysis, is the data collection phase of the life-cycle assessment. This phase involves quantifying the environmental inputs (raw materials, energy) and outputs (emissions, waste) of your product.

For each stage of the product’s life cycle, data must be collected on:

• Raw materials
• Energy
• Water
• Emissions to air, water, or land

3. Impact assessment

Phase three involves evaluating potential environmental impacts using data from phase two. An impact assessment, or life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), typically includes:

1. Selection of Impact Categories: Identify relevant environmental issues like global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, and eco-toxicity.
2. Classification: Assign LCI data (inputs and outputs) to the selected categories, e.g., CO2 emissions to global warming and NOₓ emissions to acidification.
3. Characterisation: Quantify contributions to each category, converting different emissions into a common unit, like CO2 equivalents for global warming.
4. Evaluation and Interpretation: Analyse results to identify significant impacts and prioritise improvements, considering assessment limitations and reliability.

4. Interpretation

In the final phase of an LCA, results must be interpreted to ensure they're clear and actionable. This process involves reviewing findings, making sure data is complete and consistent, and drawing meaningful conclusions. While you can interpret results as you go, the most reliable insights come from thoroughly analysed data.

Reaching Net Zero: beyond emission reduction

A life-cycle assessment offers a detailed view of a product’s environmental impact, guiding companies in making informed decisions to reduce these impacts. While reducing emissions is crucial for achieving net-zero goals, it's becoming clear that reduction alone may not suffice to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement.

To truly reach net zero, companies must offset any remaining greenhouse gas emissions through effective carbon removal. Although this can be challenging, understanding and accessing reliable carbon removal options is key to meeting these climate commitments.

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