Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a technique for managing environmental impacts within industry or business. It is often referred to as “cradle to grave” analysis or even Life Cycle Assessment.
Its purpose is to identify and evaluate the environmental impacts of a product at every stage of its existence from its constituent raw materials to its final disposal and everything in between. At each of these stages, the environmental aspects, such as the amount of energy and water used, are quantified. This would include research, development, raw material extraction, production, transport and distribution, consumer use and final disposal.
Often, we seem to concentrate on the production stage of a process, activity or product when assessing the environmental impacts. However, with examples such as care and washing machines, this production stage may account for only 20-30% of the environmental burden.
After quantifying the impacts, the figures are then used to calculate the associated environmental impacts, such as climate change. Then there is the identification and evaluation of the options for reducing these potential impacts. LCA is often useful for making a comparison between the environmental impacts of different production materials and methods. For example, some people think that recycling is the cure for all impacts, but often the process requires even more energy than manufacturing the product from scratch.
It is recommended to use life cycle analysis when implementing environmental management systems like EMAS or ISO14001, but it is not formally required.
At the most basic level, LCA must consider inputs such as materials and energy, and outputs via emissions to air, land and water as well as solid wastes. The natural progression would be to consider even the environmental impacts from suppliers and contractors.
A thorough LCA should consider the upstream impacts of a product. A system or Green or Environmental Purchasing should be employed to ensure that the products and services brought in meet the existing standards of the organization bringing them in.
Downstream impacts must also be considered by employing a process of Life Cycle Design. The product is manufactured in such a way that resources are used efficiently and waste is minimized on final disposal.
Overall, LCA is a powerful set of tools for quantifying, evaluating, comparing, and improving goods and services in terms of their potential environmental impacts. It does have its limitations in that it can be difficult to implement consistently across the board and over various nations. This will be discussed in later articles. Hopefully, the use of modern life cycle cost analysis software will aid an improvement in consistency in the future.