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Is it Possible to Get a LCA Certification?
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Sustainability is slowly becoming one of the most pivotal topics for businesses to cover if they want to prove successful worldwide, which means a wide variety of certifications will be required to demonstrate their commitment to eco-friendly practices – such as by acquiring an LCA certification.
However, obtaining an LCA certification may not be as simple as one might think – seeing as there is no universally accepted certification, much like there is no standardised ESG certification.
In this article, we’ll explain what an LCA certification is, why it is important, and the options your company could pursue to prove LCA compliant.
What is LCA?
LCA refers to the evaluation method used to determine the environmental impact of a product or service.
💡 The main goal of an LCA assessment is to help companies improve their design process to be more eco-friendly and create a more efficient and environmentally product to reduce the emissions created by said product in the long-term.
“ LCAs play a role in revealing how much pollution or waste is created by a productor service, and can help businesses to get started on their sustainability journey by highlighting the potential improvements to be made. ”
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Conducting an LCA assessment can allow your business to:
- Compare & contrast the environmental impact of various products
- Easily comply with environmental regulations
- Implement newfound eco-friendly designs
- Reduce the environmental impact of an existing product
💡 Popular examples of LCA in action include determining how to make the packaging for a product more sustainable by comparing the use of plastic, glass and other materials – in addition to building materials used in construction by determining which materials will equate to a lower carbon footprint.
Key Components to LCA
- Clearly Define Goals – It is important to determine which goals are most essential to reduce the environmental impact of the product – such as energy or water usage. This can help to create attainable goals to mitigate further emissions from the product.
- Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) – This refers to collecting data on the energy, water, and materials required to determine the amount of waste created during each stage of life of the product.
- Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) – This refers to evaluating the potential environmental impacts of these inputs and outputs.
- Interpreting the Data – Once all of the information regarding the product has been collected, it’s important to analyze the data to develop an effective sustainability plan moving forward.
👉 Almost everyone can benefit from LCA, including the manufacturers, public agencies, and manufacturers – as LCA can provide indispensable information regarding the current sustainability of your products and services to allow for better decision making to improve them in the future.
Why is LCA important?
There are several reasons why conducting an LCA assessment is worthwhile to your business, such as by helping to make more eco-friendly products, reducing emissions long-term, and boosting your brand reputation.
💡 Conducting a LCA assessment is one of the best ways to demonstrate your company’s commitment to environmental reform while also helping to improve your product to appeal to newer, more sustainability-savvy consumers.
“ Think of LCA as going to the doctor for an annual checkup: it’s an opportunity to find what’s working well and what adjustments can be made to improve the overall efficacy of your company’s product. ”
Here are some of the reasons why LCA is important:
- Identify High Emissive Areas in Your Business – LCA can help your company to better understand its industrial processes and determine which areas are most crucial to cut back on, such as transportation emissions or how the materials required to make the product are sourced. This can allow your business to rectify its current business model to be more eco-friendly in the long-term.
- Design More Eco-Friendly Products – Up to 46% of people say that they are purchasing sustainable products to minimise their individual impact on the environment, accounting for nearly half of the general consumer market. Finding solutions to develop a more eco-friendly design could prove not only beneficial for the planet, but for your business – as you’ll gain the ability to attract sustainably conscious consumers.
- Reduce GHG Emissions in Landfill – According to the EPA, landfills account for a whopping total of 17% of greenhouse gas emissions, and much of that is attributed to the waste created by throwing out single-use products and other daily cosmetic products. If more companies were to conduct an LCA assessment, they would have greater insight on how to reduce the emissions created by products after they’re disposed of in landfills.
- Cut Back on Operational Costs – Oftentimes, an LCA assessment will reveal inefficiencies in the manufacturing of your products – which can allow for improved processing to ultimately cut back on operational costs such as utility or water bills.
- Comply with Environmental Regulations – These days, it can be challenging for companies to ensure consistent compliance with current and future regulations – but remaining aware of LCA can help businesses to stay one-step ahead of these requirements.
- Demonstrate Your Company’s Commitment to Sustainability – Providing an LCA for your products can allow for more tangible and thoughtful commentary in your annual sustainability reports to communicate your genuine efforts to reduce the environmental impact of your products. This is especially important seeing as transparency and accountability are becoming increasingly imperative in the business world to ensure stakeholder engagement.
👉 Overall, LCA is important as it can help companies to appeal to sustainable consumers, comply with environmental regulations, and illustrate a genuine effort to reduce their impact on the environment.
Is there a LCA certification?
Similar to ESG, there is no single universal LCA certification – but there are many options for your business to be certified for its LCA practices.
💡 Since there is no universal LCA certification, companies and individual professionals will often refer to other LCA trainings or certifications to demonstrate a proficient LCA methodology.
“ If there were a standardised LCA certification, it would allow for greater credibility and consistency to adopt sustainable business practices for the LCA impact created by products worldwide. ”
Here are some of the reasons why having no universal certification for LCA could prove challenging:
Inconsistent Standards and Methodologies
Since there is no universal LCA certification, professionals and organisations alike rebound to use different methodologies and softwares that could yield various results – making it challenging to determine whether someone’s LCA methodology is proficient or not.
“ Think of how SAT and ACT scores are used as a way to gauge someone’s test taking skills to enter college in the United States – without these scores, colleges would have to use a student’s GPA for admission. This would be an unfair baseline comparison to use since high schools across the country offer different levels of education. In this sense, LCA is missing the equivalent of the SAT or ACT. ”
Challenging to Verifying LCA
If a universal LCA certification were to exist, it would be easier to provide stakeholders with consistent evidence of a functional LCA methodology in place.
However, since there isn’t, it can be challenging to verify an existing LCA methodology. This can require multiple professionals with expertise in LCA needing to validate the existing plan – which can take both time and money away from the company.
Prohibits LCA From Going Global
Without a universal LCA certification, a barrier remains in allowing LCA to go global – as multinational companies and industries around the world will lack a standardised certification that can apply for cross-border sustainability initiatives.
In addition to this, globally renowned businesses will often need to acquire more than one LCA certification – as it’s likely that one certification will prove more worthwhile in one region of the world and could deem itself next-to-useless in another.
The table below will further depict the struggles of lacking a universal LCA certification:
| Problem | Description |
|---|---|
| Inconsistent Standards and Methodologies | Without a universal LCA certification, various methodologies are used, leading to inconsistent results. This makes it difficult to compare LCAs across sectors and regions. |
| Difficulty in Verifying Credibility | The lack of a universal certification makes it harder to assess whether a practitioner has the necessary expertise, leading to differing levels of quality and credibility in LCA studies. |
| Fragmentation of Certifications | Multiple certifications focus on different aspects of LCA without harmonisation, which creates confusion for companies and professionals deciding which certification to pursue. |
| Challenges in Global Implementation | Different countries prioritise specific environmental issues, making global implementation of LCA more complex without a standard certification to unify efforts. |
| Limited Accountability | Without universal oversight, LCA results may be less reliable, allowing companies to potentially misrepresent their environmental impact or engage in greenwashing. |
| Barriers to Wider Adoption | The complexity and fragmented nature of current LCA certifications hinder adoption, especially for smaller companies. A universal certification could simplify the process and encourage broader usage. |
What can your company do to prove you are LCA certified?
There are a wide variety of certifications and LCA training that your company can pursue in order to demonstrate your compliance with LCA – such as by obtaining an LCACP, EDP, or various ISO certifications.
Here are some of the trainings and certifications your business can use to demonstrate you are LCA certified:
- Acquire a Certified Life Cycle Assessment Professional (LCACP) – This LCA certification is offered by the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA), an is geared towards professionals who wants to be certified for their LCA methodologies – much like a language teacher would want to be certified for their teaching techniques. However, this certification requires previous experience in LCA – and those applying for the certification must take an LCA course and pass the exam. Overall, it may not be suitable for businesses – but rather for individual professionals.
- Provide an EPD – An Environmental Product Disclosure, or an EPD, can quantify the environmental information about the life cycle of a product. Overall, an EPD can serve as one of the most useful LCA certifications – as it’s one of the closest certifications to a universal certification for LCA.
- ISO 14040 & ISO 14044 – This ISO certification, alongside ISO 14041, ISO 14042, and ISO 14043, which could be used as supplementary certification – provides an all encompassing overview for sufficient LCA practices. The benefit of acquiring an ISO 14040 or ISO 14044 certification is that it allows various organisations to be recognised for their LCA procedures worldwide.
- Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Certification – Similar to the PEF initiative developed by the European Union, this LCA certification can prove that companies are complying with the EU’s environmental standards via LCA. However, while this certification is good for companies based in the European Union – it may not be the best for businesses based outside of the EU.
- Greenhouse Gas Protocol LCA Certification – Provided by the globally recognised GHG Protocol, this training and certification can help companies be certified in terms of the carbon footprint and other GHG-related environmental impacts. The overarching benefit of an LCA training certification from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol over other LCA training and certifications, such as from GaBi or SimaPro, is that the GHG Protocol is well-known around the world.
- Conduct an LCA Assessment – As this isn’t considered a certification of any sort, it would require your company declaring the results of your LCA assessment and subsequent actions taken to utilise the data analyzed in your next sustainability report – which then may need to be audited to ensure credibility.
👉 If you’re looking for a more in-depth article on how to conduct an LCA assessment, be sure to read our article here.
💡 It’s important to remember that these various certifications and trainings each focus on different components related to LCA – meaning that it may prove useful to acquire more than one certification to demonstrate your company’s well-rounded approach to LCA.
Ultimately, there is no universal LCA certification – but there are a wide variety of LCA certifications and training available for your company to pursue in order to prove LCA compliance.
Remember, pursuing an LCA certification often requires conducting an LCA assessment to begin with – something Greenly can help you with.
What About Greenly?
If reading this article on if it’s possible to get an LCA certification has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!
Aligning your business to comply with sustainability initiatives such as LCA can be challenging, but don’t worry – Greenly is here to help. Click here to schedule a demo to see how Greenly can help you find ways to improve energy efficiency and decrease the dependency on fossil fuels in your own company.
Greenly can help you make an environmental change for the better, starting with a carbon footprint assessment to know how much carbon emissions your company produces.
Click here to learn more about Greenly and how we can help you reduce your carbon footprint.
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