Understanding the impacts of your products – We now support you in LCA analyses

1. What is an LCA?

LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment. It is an analysis of the environmental impacts of a product over its entire life cycle.  

The exercise aims at quantifying the environmental impacts of all inputs and outputs, and to compile them into an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the product. This is done across the entire life cycle of the product, which consists generally of five main stages: 

1. Raw material sourcing: the extraction of raw materials and processing of secondary material input that will be used for the manufacturing of the product, as well as the transportation to the production facility.  
2. Manufacturing: all impacts that are related to the manufacturing processes, where raw materials or intermediary products are processed into the product.  
3. Distribution: the outbound transportation phase, where the manufactured products are distributed to the customers, whether for further processing or for use by end customers.  
4. Use: all impacts related to the use of the product over its entire life cycle. This includes use or application of the product, maintenance, repair, replacement, operational energy use and operational water use. 
5. End of life: all impacts related to the deconstruction and demolition of the product (including transport to waste processing sites and disposal of waste) are covered.

In general, two different scopes can be considered when performing a life cycle assessment.  

• Cradle-to-gate: it encompasses everything from the ‘cradle’ (raw materials extraction) to the ‘gate’ of the factory, i.e. up to the point where the manufactured products leave the company to be transported to the company’s customer.  

• Cradle-to-grave: it encompasses the entire life cycle of the product, from the ‘cradle’ (raw materials extraction) all the way to the ‘grave’ where the product becomes a waste and needs to be disposed of (end-of-life).  

Note: The ‘cradle-to-cradle’ concept has recently been developed to illustrate a closed-loop system where the waste and/or energy is reused, recycled or recovered and feeds the product stage of another product within the same system.  

The value of the LCA also lies in the multiplicity of the environmental impacts that are considered in the analysis. Indeed, while dependent on the chosen program operator, most of them will address the major environmental impact categories, encompassing various aspects of environmental management, such as climate change, water and resources use, eutrophication, ozone depletion, and so on.  

2. Why perform an LCA?

Conducting a life cycle assessment can have several goals: 

• Supplier & customer partnership: calculating the impact of your products can help strengthen your relationships with both your customers (by providing robust information and showing that environmental management is part of your strategy) and your suppliers (by engaging them in your environmental journey and potentially co-developing solutions to decrease your impacts) 

• Product differentiation: being able to provide specific information about your product, and potentially to decrease its impacts, allows you to position your product favorably in the market 

• Internal environmental management and strategy: product LCA is a piece of the puzzle of your climate strategy, bringing a useful complementarity to your organizational carbon footprint. It allows to reconcile a top-down strategy with a bottom-up approach 

• Performance tracking: knowledge is power. Understanding the impacts of your products at a certain time allows you to track their performance through time  

• Product eco-design: ultimately, understanding the multi-faceted environmental impacts of your products can allow you to think them responsibly, and to integrate environmental considerations into the design phase of the product, to act proactively on their impacts.

3. How to perform an LCA?

Carrying out a complete life cycle assessment requires several steps, which are all important and allow for robust results, aligned with the relevant standards (namely ISO 14040/14044/14067). From the goal definition, all the way to the data collection and interpretation of the results, various steps should be undertaken to ensure compliance with the standards.  

There are a few minimum requirements to be met in order to fully answer to the need: 

• The studied product must be described, that includes a definition of the product and the functional unit. 
• The scope of the analysis (cradle-to-gate or cradle-to-grave) must be disclosed
• The methodology used (GHG Protocol, ISO, PEF, …) must be disclosed 
• The results must include at least the climate change impact category, translated into a GWP indicator (Global Warming Potential), and can include several other impact categories  
• The results must include a breakdown of impacts per life cycle stage 
• Ideally, a certification from a third-party verification body, assuring that the results have been verified and are correct.  

4. How to use an LCA?

There are several types of documents that can be used to provide environmental information, which are based on a life cycle assessment. The two most common ones being a carbon footprint (often referred to as ‘Product Carbon Footprint’, or ‘PCF’) and an environmental declaration: 

• A carbon footprint details the results of the life cycle assessment with a focus on climate change 

• An environmental declaration details the results of the life cycle assessment across several environmental impact categories beyond climate change, such as water and resources use, eutrophication, ozone depletion, and so on. The most well-know is the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) 

A life cycle assessment can be carried out either internally, if the knowledge and resources are in place to do so, or externally, via the support of LCA experts who can carry out the analysis for you.   

This type of external support guarantees compliance with the relevant standards, and is usually a first step if no knowledge exists internally.  

In both situations, the certification must be performed by a third-party verifier to allow the final results to be communicated publicly.