Life Cycle Assessment: A Key to Effective Sustainability Management

Step 1: Goal and scope definition

The first stage of the LCA process provides the foundation for further analysis and ensures that results are relevant and meaningful by providing an understanding of what is to be analysed and what is to leave out, and how to do it. After this stage, you should have answers to such questions:

• What is the reason for conducting the assessment?
• What is the assessment's subject, also known as the functional unit? For example, will it be a product, process or activity, or some elements related to it?
• What are analysis boundaries? What life cycle stages of the product are to be included in the assessment, and what to exclude?
• Is there a time frame for the evaluation?

Life cycle assessment example: goal & scope

Let’s take a laptop as an example, to better understand each step of LCA. Here are the possible outcomes of goal & scope stage:

• Goal: The goal of the LCA study is to evaluate the environmental impacts of a laptop throughout its life cycle.
• Functional unit: The functional unit for the study is one laptop computer that meets the average usage and performance expectations of a typical user, over a 5-year period.
• Analysis boundaries: The scope of the assessment includes the entire life cycle of a laptop computer, including raw material extraction, manufacturing, use phase, and disposal or recycling. The geographic scope is unlimited.
• Timeframe for evaluation: The study will evaluate the environmental impacts of a laptop over a 5-year period, which is the average lifespan of a laptop according to industry reports.

Step 2: Life cycle inventory (LCI)

The second stage involves collecting data on resources used and waste generated throughout a functional unit's life cycle, including raw materials, emissions, energy consumption, etc. The data can be gathered from various high-quality sources, such as industry reports, product specifications, and other relevant sources of information. The streamlined data collection process at this stage can be easily achieved with different software solutions. For example, ELEKS Dakar can automatically gather accurate data on electricity consumption and related emissions. The collected data is further used to calculate environmental impacts of a functional unit in the next stage.

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Life cycle assessment example: LCI

By collecting data at each stage of the functional unit's life cycle, you can get different datasets, for example, on materials needed to manufacture a laptop (engineered plastics, steel, copper, aluminium and precious metals like gold, platinum and palladium, etc.), on energy and water consumption associated with its production (190,000 litres of water are used and 1,200kgs of earth dug and mined to produce the components for laptops) and energy consumption of the laptop during its use (on average a laptop consumes 1.433 kWh per month).

Step 3: Impact assessment

Now that all the relevant data has been collected, it's time to begin the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). It is where one takes inventory of all the data gathered to evaluate and quantify potential environmental or human health damage.

Life cycle assessment example: LCIA

A laptop, on average, emits 422.5 kgs of CO2 over its lifespan – including production, transportation and first 4 years of use. At the end of a laptop’s life cycle, recycling programs are designed to recover materials used in its manufacture for reuse. However, according to NSCEP, only 38% of laptops disposed in 2009 were actually collected for recycling - the rest ended up in landfills where their reclaimable components could no longer be used.

Step 4: Interpretation

Without interpreting the data, making informed decisions or recommendations based on the findings would be impossible. This stage also involves identifying areas for improvement and waste minimisation.

Even though LCA results can be interpreted at any stage of the assessment, the interpretation after all the data has been collected gives a complete picture and ensures that all aspects are considered. As a result, one can make the best conclusions and recommendations.

Note that the examples described above have been taken from various reports and research and are meant to demonstrate what kind of outcomes a product's life cycle assessment could have. The actual results of an LCA can be more or less detailed depending on your needs.

Final thoughts

The LCA is essential for businesses wanting to reduce their environmental impact and develop more sustainable products and processes. LCA provides a comprehensive view of a product's impact, offering invaluable insights into the factors influencing its sustainable performance, like the choice of materials or power sources. And because it involves all four steps of goal and scope definition, inventorying, assessment and interpretation – with rock-solid data to back up sustainability claims about products – LCAs help businesses gain consumer trust, enhance brand value and get ahead of the competition.