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Product life cycle assessment how to#
Product life cycle assessment iso#

Product life cycle assessment iso#

The ISO 14044 standard describes a number of checks to test whether conclusions are adequately supported by the data and by the procedures you used.

Read how the LCIA step helped AISE determine the hotspots in the life cycle and define advanced sustainability profiles of their products >ĭuring the interpretation phase, you check that your conclusions are well-substantiated.

Would you like a single score to show how sustainable your product is? Or to be able to see whether your new design improves on CO 2 emissions and keeps land use change at least the same? This usually depends on how you would like to address your audience and the ability of your audience to understand detailed results. The most important choice you have to make is how integrated you want the results to be. You classify the environmental impacts, evaluate them by what is most important to your company, and translate them into environmental themes such as global warming or human health. In the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), you draw the conclusions that allow you to make better business decisions.

Read how the inventory analysis helped Lucite understand the environmental impacts of plastic products >.

Together, this gives you the complete picture. Environmental outputs – which your product’s life cycle puts out into the environment – include the emission of pollutants and the waste streams. An example of an environmental input – something you take out of the environment to put into the product’s life cycle – is the use of raw materials and energy. In the inventory analysis, you look at all the environmental inputs and outputs associated with a product or service. Inventory analysis of extractions and emissions

Read how defining the right goal & scope helped The European Space Agency to drive value >.

For instance, the reason for executing the LCA, a precise definition of the product and its life cycle and a description of the system boundaries. The goal and scope describe the most important choices, which are often subjective. The best way to do this is to carefully define the goal and scope of the LCA study. The challenge for an LCA practitioner is to make sure the simplification and distortions do not influence the results too much. A model is a simplification of a complex reality and as with all simplifications, this means that the reality will be distorted in some way. The goal & scope definition step ensures that your LCA is performed consistently.Īn LCA models a product, service, or system life cycle.

Product life cycle assessment how to#

In this sense, every LCA you do not only gives you valuable advice to make changes in your business, it also tells you how to best plan your next LCA to learn even more. Or the results of the assessment or your interpretation may nudge you to revise your goal and scope. For instance, the first round of analysis may tell you that you need more data. LCA is an iterative methodology, where you refine things as you go along. The standards are provided by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in ISO 1404, and describe the four main phases of an LCA: LCA is a standardized methodology, which gives it its reliability and transparency. The interesting thing about a life cycle model is that you can use it to perform a variety of assessments whatever matches best matches your business needs right now.

There are also many LCA-related assessments, such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), studies compliant with a product- or sector-specific standards, single-issues analyses like the carbon or water footprint, social LCA and long-term monitoring studies. A report for internal use has fewer requirements than a report that will be used for marketing or other external communication. Rule of thumb is that the more detail you want, the more complete your LCA needs to be. And product designers can explore how their design choices affect the sustainability of the products. A purchasing department of a company can learn which suppliers have the most sustainable products and methods. Consumers can learn how sustainable a product is.

Your LCA results can help you improve your product development, marketing, strategic planning and even policymaking. With LCA, you can evaluate the environmental impacts of your product or service from the very first to the very last or from cradle to grave. Every part of a product’s life cycle – extraction of materials from the environment, the production of the product, the use phase and what happens to the product after it is no longer used – can have an impact on the environment in many ways. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the factual analysis of a product’s entire life cycle in terms of sustainability.