What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

As environmental awareness increases, industries and businesses are assessing how

their activities affect the environment. Society has become concerned about the
issues of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Many
businesses have responded to this awareness by providing “greener” products and
using “greener” processes. The environmental performance of products and
processes has become a key issue, which is why some companies are investigating
ways to minimize their effects on the environment. Many companies have found it
advantageous to explore ways of moving beyond compliance using pollution
prevention strategies and environmental management systems to improve their
environmental performance. One such tool is LCA. This concept considers the
entire life cycle of a product (Curran 1996).
Life cycle assessment is a “cradle-to-grave” approach for assessing industrial
systems. “Cradle-to-grave” begins with the gathering of raw materials from the
earth to create the product and ends at the point when all materials are returned to
the earth. LCA evaluates all stages of a product’s life from the perspective that
they are interdependent, meaning that one operation leads to the next. LCA enables
the estimation of the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in
the product life cycle, often including impacts not considered in more traditional
analyses (e.g., raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product
disposal, etc.). By including the impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA
provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or
process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product
and process selection.
The term “life cycle” refers to the major activities in the course of the product’s
life-span from its manufacture, use, and maintenance, to its final disposal,
including the raw material acquisition required to manufacture the product.

Exhibit 1-1 illustrates the possible life cycle stages that can be considered in an LCA and the typical
inputs/outputs measured.

Outputs
Inputs

Raw Materials Acquisition Atmospheric Emissions

Raw Materials Manufacturing Waterborne Wastes

Energy Use/Reuse Maintenance Solid Wastes

Coproducts
Recycle/Waste Management
Other Releases

System Boundary

Life Cycle Stages (Source: EPA,1993)

Specifically, LCA is a technique to assess the environmental aspects and potential

impacts associated with a product, process, or service, by:
• Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and
environmental releases
• Evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified
inputs and releases
• Interpreting the results to help decision-makers make a more informed
decision.
The LCA process is a systematic, phased approach and consists of four
components: goal definition and scoping, inventory analysis, impact assessment,
and interpretation

1. Goal Definition and Scoping - Define and describe the product, process
or activity. Establish the context in which the assessment is to be made
and identify the boundaries and environmental effects to be reviewed for
the assessment.
2. Inventory Analysis - Identify and quantify energy, water and materials
usage and environmental releases (e.g., air emissions, solid waste
disposal, waste water discharges).
3. Impact Assessment - Assess the potential human and ecological effects of
energy, water, and material usage and the environmental releases
identified in the inventory analysis.
4. Interpretation - Evaluate the results of the inventory analysis and impact
assessment to select the preferred product, process or service with a
clear understanding of the uncertainty and the assumptions used to
generate the results.
Life cycle assessment is unique because it encompasses all processes and
environmental releases beginning with the extraction of raw materials and the
production of energy used to create the product through the use and final
disposition of the product. When deciding between two or more alternatives, LCA
can help decision-makers compare all major environmental impacts caused by
products, processes, or services.
What Are the Benefits of Conducting an LCA?
An LCA can help decision-makers select the product or process that results in the
least impact to the environment. This information can be used with other factors,
such as cost and performance data to select a product or process. LCA data
identifies the transfer of environmental impacts from one media to another (e.g.,
eliminating air emissions by creating a wastewater effluent instead) and/or from
one life cycle stage to another (e.g., from use and reuse of the product to the raw
material acquisition phase). If an LCA were not performed, the transfer might not
be recognized and properly included in the analysis because it is outside of the
typical scope or focus of product selection processes.

By performing an LCA, analysts can:

• Develop a systematic evaluation of the environmental consequences
associated with a given product.
• Analyze the environmental trade-offs associated with one or more specific
products/processes to help gain stakeholder (state, community, etc.)
acceptance for a planned action.
• Quantify environmental releases to air, water, and land in relation to each
life cycle stage and/or major contributing process.
• Assist in identifying significant shifts in environmental impacts between life
cycle stages and environmental media.
• Assess the human and ecological effects of material consumption and
environmental releases to the local community, region, and world.
• Compare the health and ecological impacts between two or more rival
products/processes or identify the impacts of a specific product or process.
• Identify impacts to one or more specific environmental areas of concern.
Limitations of Conducting an LCA
Performing an LCA can be resource and time intensive. Depending upon how
thorough an LCA the user wishes to conduct, gathering the data can be
problematic, and the availability of data can greatly impact the accuracy of the
final results. Therefore, it is important to weigh the availability of data, the time
necessary to conduct the study, and the financial resources required against the
projected benefits of the LCA.
LCA will not determine which product or process is the most cost effective or
works the best. Therefore, the information developed in an LCA study should be
used as one component of a more comprehensive decision process assessing the
trade-offs with cost and performance, e.g., Life Cycle Management.

Life Cycle Management

Life Cycle Management (LCM) is the application of life cycle thinking to modern
business practice, with the aim to manage the total life cycle of an organization’s
product and services toward more sustainable consumption and production (Jensen
and Remmen 2004). It is an integrated framework of concepts and techniques to
address environmental, economic, technological, and social aspects of products,
services, and organizations. LCM, as any other management pattern, is applied on
a voluntary basis and can be adapted to the specific needs and characteristics of
individual organizations (SETAC 2004).
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