Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A Guide For Sustainable Product Design & Development

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Tue, 30 Jul 2024

LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is a sore subject in the ESG landscape, and all for the right reasons. As defined by ISO 14040, LCA is the evaluation of a product or service’s impact on the environment throughout its life cycle, ranging from raw material extraction and material processing to its end-of-life. The impact is segregated into three elements: environmental, social, and economic. When a product system has no adverse impact in all three aspects of LCA, the product could be termed a sustainable one. Basically, LCA, also known as Life Cycle Analysis, has the potential to figure out opportunities for sustainable development.

Standards Of LCA

LCA is approached within the sphere of the ISO 14000 series. There are two complementary standards for performing an LCA, which are laid down by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Meeting these standards allows businesses to establish the scope and goals of the LCA, create the system to be assessed, gather data, and generate reports on the outcome.

Let’s have a closer look at the two standards:

ISO 14040 – Describes the framework and principles for LCA, which constitute goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, and interpretation. Though ISO 14040 presents the guidelines for carrying out an LCA, it does not instruct the specific ways to do so.

ISO 14044 – Lays emphasis on the various ways or in-depth requirements to conduct an LCA. It encompasses directives for electing category indicators, impact categories, and characterization models. Moreover, ISO 14044 helps make certain that the LCAs are being performed with the utmost reliability and precision.             

Four Stages Of LCA

Being an iterative methodology, LCA uses a cyclic approach, which enables you to modify things as you move forward with the assessment. Let’s say, the foremost stage of assessment might give you the idea that more data is required, or the interpretation of your assessment’s result might impel you to re-examine your goal and scope. This means that every LCA step helps you plan your next LCA step, therefore improving your knowledge and decision-making proficiency.

In the following, you will get to dive a bit deeper into the four stages of LCA.     

Goal and Scope Definition

In this stage, the goal and scope of the assessment are described, which encompasses the reason for carrying out the assessment and the intended application and audience. The whole stage involves mentioning the functions of the investigated systems, the system boundaries, the functional unit, the limitations of the study, and many more.   

Inventory Analysis

For the life cycle inventory analysis, all the data regarding environmental inputs and outputs is gathered and deduced. Based on the LCA’s scope, the data might contain information on emissions, water consumption, material usage, and many more. The most accurate data can be found through primary sources, which involve sending questionnaires to a specific individual. For instance, the data about water consumption can be easily extracted from the water bills, and likewise, the material consumption data can be mined from the material bills. When the primary source is not available, secondary sources are used for data extraction. The secondary sources involve industry averages such as Carbon Minds and the GaBi Database of Germany and EcoInvent of Switzerland, to name a few.         

Impact Assessment

It involves the measurement of the environmental impacts, starting with the categorization of the inventory data into impact groups. Then, the accumulated data is inserted into computational models to determine the causation, wherein the impacts are adjusted to the reference flow with calculated functional units. The impact estimation is derived from the result of the analysis.      

Interpretation

Here, the results are assessed concerning the goal and scope definition, further facilitating the arrival of a conclusion, displaying the limitations of the outcome, and offering recommendations on the basis of the results of the previous stages of LCA.   

Types Of LCA

Conceptual LCA – It is an extremely basic level LCA that pays attention to qualitative inventory to make flow diagrams and comprehend things like which components have the highest relative climatic effects.    

Simplified LCA – This is more of a general kind of Life Cycle Assessment since it uses standard modules and generic data for the production of energy. It primarily emphasizes the most vital facets of the environment, followed by an exhaustive evaluation of the outcome’s reliability. 

Detailed LCA – It involves the complete procedure of all-encompassing collection of the data, which is extremely particular to the product under consideration. 

Advantages Of LCA

Mitigate climate impact

With LCA’s systematic approach, it gets easier to find the epicenter of the biggest negative climatic impact in the life cycle. An example to simply understand the point would be: performing an LCA for fuel-powered vehicles that greatly affect the environment during the usage phase due to excess fuel consumption. This very information can be used to enhance the overall climatic performance with targeted measures like optimizing the production process or modifying the designs.  

Regulatory compliance

LCA facilitates businesses to be on their toes regarding the advancements happening in regional and global sustainability reporting. With the implementation of LCA, it becomes easy for businesses to comply with significant regulations such as the Green Claims Directive, the German Supply Chain Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission Climate Disclosure Rule, and many more. Apart from these, LCA also helps businesses get hold of the requisite tools that are much-needed to address the forthcoming eco-design needs.   

Demonstrate sustainability commitments

The outcomes extracted by the LCA processes can be consolidated into reports as well as eco-labeled. This will further help in credibly presenting the sustainability commitments to informed stakeholders like investors, regulators, and customers.  

Opt for more sustainable choices

LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) allows a business to make well-informed decisions, which, as a result, saves resources and costs at the same time. An example would be to examine the environmental impact of a fuel-powered vehicle and an electric vehicle, keeping in mind their complete life cycles.   

Assessment of future developments

LCA is implemented to test various options in a design, beforehand. The type of LCA that predicts future scenarios is termed ‘prospective LCA’ or ‘ex-ante LCA’. Being aware of future scenarios can curb climatic liabilities, avoid poor investments, moderate costs, and expect improvements in regulations, to name a few.       

Limitations And Challenges Of LCA

More often than not, LCA seems like an easy task to perform; however, it can be quite complicated and expensive to carry out since it involves accumulating exhaustive climatic data throughout every phase of the life cycle. To resolve the issue, adoption of simplified LCA is on the rise since they offer immediate verification of a product’s life cycle. This type of LCA is basically advantageous for those businesses that do not possess the requisite expertise and resources to perform a comprehensive LCA. Besides, for a successful LCA, accessibility to more reliable data has become a prerequisite. Due to this, more efforts are being made on a European and international scale.

Since lifecycle analysis places the utmost emphasis on the climatic impacts, it clearly denotes that the social and economic challenges are often not looked at. Moreover, when prospective and non-real climatic impacts are assessed, the LCA methods create an analysis at just the regional or global level rather than focusing on the local level. This shows that the LCA, after acknowledging the global environmental effects of emissions, has not given much emphasis to the small or local effects on the environment or public health.          

How Do Sustainability Consultants Assist With LCA?

Sustainability Consultants are professionals who advise businesses with best practices in relation to Life Cycle Assessment. They have years of expertise under their belt to guide you through the steps that are needed to perform an LCA in the most reliable and accurate manner. A dedicated and committed sustainability advisor will exhibit the areas where implementing a specific environmental initiative will bring about real change, thus ensuring a huge return on your investments. They will also make sure that you, as a business, are aware of various styles of assessment methods, which will help you easily understand the LCA report while simultaneously being more informed about the all-inclusive sustainable landscape. A global consulting firm which truly understands and addresses client needs can embody a customer-centric approach in the dynamic field of sustainability.

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