Life Cycle Assessment

The compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. Life cycle thinking is based on the analogy that products and services have their own life cycles from cradle to grave, consisting of resource acquisition. It covers production/processing, distribution, use and end-of-life (recycling/upcycling).

What is the Product Lifecycle?

Product life cycle analyses generally aim to provide benefits in four areas.

Identifying opportunities for improvement through the identification of environmental hotspots in a product’s life cycle.
Analysis of the contribution of life cycle stages to the overall environmental burden, often with the aim of prioritizing improvements to products or processes.
Comparison between products for internal or external communication and as a basis for environmental claims.
Defining Key Performance Indicators management and decision support.

What are the Benefits of Life Cycle Assesstment?

LCA is an accounting or operational tool that collects product and process input and output data. Either way, through the insights and data generated, LCA creates added value in the following ways:

Comparison of environmental performance between two or more products – Scenario comparison
Providing information on environmental impacts at various stages of the product life cycle and hotspot analysis
Support for informed decision-making and carbon reduction target roadmap
Support for product design and marketing – “Design for the Environment” and Eco-design
Useful communication and support for marketing of products and services – Environmental declarations
Support for technological development – Innovation and ETV.
Focus on the whole life cycle and the treatment and reuse of waste – Contribution to the Circular Economy
Sustainable supply chain – Green public and private procurement

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the Product Life Cycle be Documented?

In addition to the outputs you will obtain for products and services as a result of Product Life Cycle studies, you can document compliance with international standards and share them with your beneficiaries. The contents of these standards are determined as ISO14040 and ISO14044 in the world.

Is Product Lifecycle Analysis Right for Everyone?

You can probably name everyone if you think they might be interested in learning more about your company’s impact.

For example, HR managers might argue that potential candidates find it interesting to learn more about the environmental footprint of their future employer.

But LCA is a very specific analysis. It provides the groundwork for any sustainability or CSR strategy within a company. This is because you can only make decisions about what you have already measured.

According to our data, the following 4 departments in your company can take immediate action based on an LCA.

Product Management / Research and Development (R&D)
Supply Chain Management / Purchasing
Marketing & Sales
Executive Level and Strategic Management

departments should be involved in this process.

What are the Stages of Product Lifecycle Analysis?

Phase 1: Defining the Goal and Scope

In the first phase of our LCA, we define exactly what we want to analyze and how deep we want to go with our analysis.

Phase 2: Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)

Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) is essentially the data collection phase of our LCA. It looks at the environmental inputs and outputs of our product or service.

Phase 3: Life Cycle Impact Assessment

So far, we have defined what we want to measure and collect in phase 1. We then collected and structured the data in phase 2.

In phase 3, we assess how significant the impacts are. This is based on our Life Cycle Inventory flows from phase 2.

Stage 4: Interpretation of our LCA

As mentioned earlier, we can always interpret our results during the evaluation.

This means that interpretation does not necessarily have to take place at the end.