Why thinking about an LCA?
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides businesses insights into a specific product's environmental impact identifies opportunities to answer the critical question how to reduce the environmental impact of that product? It will allow selecting the appropriate energy sources for production, materials, transportation methods and recycling or waste practices.
An LCA assists in making strategic decisions, both in choosing between product alternatives, and in optimizing the environmental performance of business processes. A data-driven approach to identify operational efficiencies through reducing material use, energy use, waste generation and emissions, throughout the entire lifecyle of the product.
Based on the physical flows of materials and energy associated with the product, an LCA evaluates a lot of different effects on the environment. These environmental effects are grouped in various so called impact categories.
The best known and most important impact category is global warming potential or climate change.
Global warming, the changes in surface air temperature, is caused by emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. GHG are produced by human activities such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NOx). The different GHG emissions are measured in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e).
An LCA is an effective way to
prioritize and assess opportunities to create added value
increase brand value (brand positioning)
improve sustainable design decisions (life cycle impact)
make better procurement decisions (raw materials as well as suppliers)
achieve cost savings
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