How to develop an ESG strategy
In this article, we’ll explore the key steps to develop an ESG strategy that not only meets global standards but also aligns with your company’s unique goals.
ESG / CSR
Industries
Ecology
Greenly solutions
Life Cycle Analysis, often shortened to LCA, is a key tool when it comes to unpacking the environmental impact of any product or service.
Every product or service has its own life cycle. From the initial design phase to production and sale, all the way to the moment it's either thrown away or recycled. This is what we call the product's life cycle. To get a real handle on your company's carbon footprint, you'll want to take a deep dive into LCAs for your various products and services.
👉 In this article, we'll explore what a life cycle analysis (LCA) is, what it involves, and the benefits of carrying out an LCA.
A life cycle analysis (also referred to as an environmental life cycle assessment) is an evaluation method used to quantify the environmental impacts of a product or service. This approach is grounded in life cycle assessment theory, which provides the framework for examining each stage of a product’s existence. LCAs not only help in identifying the eco-friendly potential within design processes (eco-design) but also enable a comparison between similar products or services. The goal? To pinpoint the most efficient and least environmentally detrimental option.
Recognized and standardized at a global level through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 14040 series), the LCA method provides an all-encompassing approach to assessing environmental impacts. It's about looking at the big picture and understanding how every stage of your product's lifecycle can affect the environment.
Who can benefit from LCA?
Should your company consider LCA? Absolutely! If your company is looking to:
LCAs offer an invaluable perspective on sustainability and can help steer your company toward a greener future, helping to mitigate the effects of global warming. With a comprehensive understanding of your environmental impact, you'll be better equipped to make strategic decisions, improve your products, and contribute to a more sustainable world.
The product's creation phase typically involves heavy consumption of energy and resources. This includes:
Environmental impacts are assessed on several parameters including:
Post-purchase, the product's usage also influences the environment. While there may be fewer stages involved, substantial resources such as fuel, energy, and water may be expended during:
The journey of a product doesn't stop at its usage phase in an LCA. How the product's end-of-life is managed is crucial. Questions like, "What happens when the product is no longer usable? Is it simply discarded or recycled?" are important considerations.
This final phase can be complex, and poor handling of this stage can lead to environmental harm. Unregulated dumping or unchecked incineration can lead to environmental repercussions including air, soil, and water pollution and harmful emissions.
The end-of-life stages include:
By taking each of these phases into account, an LCA provides an overview of a product or service's environmental footprint from creation to disposal.
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) relies on carefully examining both input and output flows, which track everything that goes into making a product or providing a service and everything that comes out of it.
In an LCA, an input flow covers all the raw materials, energy, and resources needed to bring a product to life - think water, oil, minerals, or electricity. Meanwhile, an output flow refers to the waste, pollution, and emissions released throughout the life of that product, such as carbon emissions or industrial byproducts.
Accurate data collection on these flows is at the core of an effective LCA. Each stage of a product’s life cycle, from raw material extraction and manufacturing to transportation and disposal, requires tracking these flows in detail. This tracking might reveal how much water is consumed during production or the volume of greenhouse gases emitted in distribution.
By analyzing these data points, an LCA can pinpoint the most significant environmental impacts linked to a product or service. This enables us to understand its full environmental footprint and provides a foundation for making informed, sustainable choices about production, materials, or even energy sources.
For example, a comprehensive LCA might include a life cycle energy analysis to assess the energy consumed at each stage of a product’s life cycle. This could reveal that the majority of energy use occurs during the manufacturing phase, prompting a company to consider more energy-efficient production methods or alternative materials. Insights like this make it easier to identify where efficiency improvements can have the most impact, helping companies reduce not only their carbon footprint but also their energy costs in the long run.
LCAs consist of four interdependent stages. These are:
The first and most important step in conducting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is to clearly define the goal and scope (ie. what is considered as part of the assessment and what is left out).
First, ask yourself why you're conducting an LCA. Is it to compare different products with the aim of adopting an eco-design approach? Or perhaps it's to help with decision-making in procurement, to improve your environmental impact reporting, or to provide clearer information to your customers about the environmental footprint of your products?
Whatever your reason, it's important to define your objectives at the outset. You should consider:
💡 A note on the functional unit. A functional unit is a unit of measurement that enables final comparisons to be made. It is used to evaluate the service provided by the product throughout its lifecycle. For example, for an LCA comparing different methods of providing heat (like electric heating, gas heating, or a heat pump), the functional unit could be 'the amount of heat provided to keep a house at 21 degrees Celsius for a year'.
What's most important is that the functional unit must be clearly defined and measurable. It should also reflect the product's purpose or function to ensure a fair and meaningful comparison.
When determining the functional unit, it's important to account for:
By carefully defining these factors, you'll be able to create a well-focused LCA that provides meaningful and actionable insights into your product's environmental footprint.
Once you've set your goals and identified what to measure, it's time to compile a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). This helps quantify the energy and material inputs, as well as emission outputs across all of the product's life cycle stages - ie. it's a record of all the energy and materials that go into a product and all the emissions that come out at each stage of its life.
The LCI gathers two kinds of data:
This data is usually sourced from a combination of activity-based factors, emission factors, and various databases. When the data isn't available, the inventory can be supplemented with generic (or secondary) data derived from calculations. Putting together this detailed inventory is key to creating a detailed picture of the product's environmental impact across its entire life cycle.
❗ Lots of mistakes can be made at this stage, which is why it is useful to have access to product analysis software or to call in the help of experts like Greenly. This means that control procedures can be put in place to ensure a more reliable life cycle analysis.
At Greenly, we’re experts in conducting Life Cycle Assessments, delivering accurate and dependable analysis. Our experience in managing every stage of the LCA process means we can guide you in avoiding common pitfalls and provide actionable insights for sustainable improvements.
This stage turns the raw life cycle data (ie. the numbers and details about how materials and energy are used) into concrete environmental impact scores. We assess these impacts based on the materials consumed, energy flows tracked, and the specific calculation methods chosen to characterize each impact.
These flows are typically broken down into two levels of impact: midpoints and endpoints.
Midpoints highlight where the most significant environmental effects could occur during a product's life cycle. They act as early indicators, pinpointing the biggest sources of pollution or resource depletion with the potential to harm the environment. By standardizing these impacts into consistent units, we can make sense of various pollutants and emissions in a more coherent way.
For example, to assess a product's contribution to soil acidification, we measure its impact in terms of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) equivalents - a common measure because SO₂ is a leading cause of acid rain. This midpoint approach gives us insight into how certain substances could affect human health or ecosystems before we see their full, long-term effects.
Endpoints take this a step further, looking at the actual, measurable damage that might be caused by the impacts we've identified. While midpoints reveal potential harm, endpoints focus on real-world consequences.
With soil acidification, for example, the endpoint impact might involve calculating the potential loss of plant and animal life in a specific area. We measure this with a metric called the "Potentially Disappeared Fraction of Species" (PDF), which estimates the number of species that could be lost due to changes in the environment.
In this last stage, we pull everything together to make sense of the full assessment. The goal here is to spot the key areas where the product or process could be made less harmful to the environment and identify changes that could have the biggest impact.
Interpreting these results means taking a close look at where the most significant environmental pressures come from. Is it in the energy used to produce the materials? Or maybe it’s the waste generated at the end of the product's life? By identifying these “hotspots”, we can figure out where changes are likely to make the biggest difference. This might mean switching to greener materials, reducing emissions during production, or finding ways to cut down on water use.
It's also essential at this stage to double-check the data, making sure everything adds up and there aren’t any big gaps that could skew the results. If any key impacts were missed or underestimated, this is the chance to go back and make adjustments.
Overall, interpreting the LCA results helps businesses make more sustainable choices. Whether it's tweaking a product’s design, selecting more sustainable suppliers, or improving transparency around environmental impact, this stage helps companies to make real, meaningful improvements that align with sustainability goals.
💡 Remember, this entire process is iterative, meaning it needs regular checks and validations to ensure you're on track toward your goals. You might need to to adjust your plan, as some data might not be easily available and the scope of study defined at the outset might need to be tweaked.
An LCA serves as an effective tool for pinpointing a company's most environmentally harmful processes. It offers valuable insights that help organizations create a robust environmental strategy to find sustainable solutions.
Not only will an LCA enhance your carbon footprint assessment, but it also pushes your company to implement a process of continuous improvement, ensuring ongoing enhancements in environmental performance.
By recognizing the strengths and environmental challenges of your product or service, you can find solutions that steer you towards eco-design. An LCA serves as a powerful tool in decision-making, supporting environmentally friendly policies, and helping companies to achieve eco-certification.
Adopting changes such as altering packaging materials, refining raw material extraction processes, enhancing transport methods, or improving end-of-life recycling strategies underscore your company's commitment to environmental stewardship.
Increasingly, consumers are factoring in environmental impacts when deciding between two similar products or services. An LCA can help to identify potential environmental harm caused by a company's products or services, allowing the company to take steps to avoid them in favor of more resource-conserving alternatives.
💡 According to a McKinsey consumer sentiment survey, over 60% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product with sustainable packaging.
An LCA creates a deeper understanding of the full range of impacts your products might have, enabling you to make more informed and environmentally conscious decisions.
Undertaking an LCA for your products or services does more than just enlighten you about their environmental effects; it offers a solid foundation from which you can effectively communicate these impacts. In an era where customers and stakeholders are placing a premium on transparency and accountability, this kind of open dialogue is becoming increasingly essential.
By carrying out an LCA, you gain tangible data and figures outlining your environmental footprint, which can be seamlessly incorporated into your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report. Rather than an optional add-on, conducting an LCA should be viewed as a crucial element of your environmental strategy, particularly when it comes to maintaining your company's reputation in our environmentally-conscious world.
An LCA provides detailed insights that can help your company comply with various environmental regulations and standards. By understanding the environmental impacts of your products and processes, you can ensure adherence to local, national, and international environmental laws. This proactive approach not only helps avoid legal penalties but also positions your company as a leader in regulatory compliance and environmental stewardship.
Conducting an LCA can be crucial for meeting the requirements of environmental regulations, such as those set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and for participating in green certification programs.
Conducting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) comes with several challenges and limitations:
Challenge | Description |
---|---|
Data Availability and Quality | Accurate and comprehensive data is essential but can be difficult to obtain, especially for all stages of a product's lifecycle. |
Complexity of Analysis | LCAs require detailed knowledge of various environmental impact categories, modelling techniques, and data interpretation, making the process complex and demanding. |
Cost | The financial costs for data collection, analysis, and ensuring accuracy can be significant, in addition to the time and resources needed. |
Time-Consuming Process | Conducting an LCA can be time-consuming, requiring extensive data collection and detailed analysis over prolonged periods. |
Resource Intensity | LCAs often require significant human and technical resources, which can be a strain on companies without specialised expertise. |
Given these challenges, it is often most efficient for companies to enlist the help of third-party experts like Greenly or utilize specialized LCA software packages. These solutions can streamline the process, ensuring the LCA is conducted accurately and efficiently, while allowing the company to focus on implementing the insights gained to improve their sustainability practices.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software is instrumental in conducting thorough environmental assessments of products. These advanced tools calculate and analyze potential environmental impacts across a product's entire life cycle. By leveraging detailed inventory data, LCA software provides a clear view of a product's environmental footprint, including material usage and energy consumption during production.
Choosing the right LCA software is critical for businesses looking to effectively understand and mitigate their environmental impacts. These tools streamline the assessment process, improving accuracy and enabling informed decision-making based on reliable data.
Benefits of using LCA software
Alternatively, businesses can conduct an LCA manually with proper data access and understanding. However, it should be noted that manual methods require more effort and can be complex and time-consuming.
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) becomes even more powerful when integrated with other sustainability tools and frameworks such as carbon footprint calculators, environmental management systems (EMS), and circular economy strategies. This integration allows businesses to adopt a fully comprehensive approach to sustainability.
Combining LCA with carbon footprint calculators provides a detailed measurement of a product's total environmental impact, including supply chain emissions. This helps set more accurate carbon reduction targets. When used alongside an EMS, LCA offers detailed insights that guide continuous environmental performance improvements.
Incorporating LCA into circular economy strategies also helps identify opportunities to minimize waste and optimize resource use throughout a product's lifecycle. This facilitates the design of products that are easier to recycle, reuse, or repurpose, supporting sustainable production and consumption.
👉 As well as helping organizations with their carbon footprint assessment, platforms like Greenly can also help companies understand the full impact of their product or service offering with a life cycle analysis.
In the US, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is recognized as a critical tool for sustainability, but the approach varies significantly depending on federal and state-level policies, as well as industry initiatives. The growing demand for transparency in environmental impacts has made LCAs increasingly important in corporate sustainability strategies.
In the absence of a unified federal mandate on LCAs, several state-level initiatives drive LCA adoption:
LCAs are widely applied across various sectors in the US, particularly:
Many US companies also adopt voluntary sustainability standards that require LCAs, such as:
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method has become a crucial tool in evaluating and reducing the environmental impacts of products and services across the globe. A comprehensive method with international recognition, the LCA is standardized through the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 series. These standards offer a reliable framework that guides industries, governments, and organizations in assessing and addressing the environmental effects of their products from creation to disposal.
The ISO 14040 series, established by the International Organization for Standardization, sets the standard for Life Cycle Assessment methodologies. This series includes ISO 14040, which outlines the basic principles and framework, and ISO 14044, which provides the specific requirements and guidelines. Together, they form a comprehensive standard for conducting LCAs, covering everything from data collection and analysis to reporting and verification.
The purpose of these standards is to ensure consistency, reliability, and transparency across LCA practices globally. By providing a structured approach to evaluating environmental impacts, the ISO 14040 series enables different organizations - regardless of size or location - to assess their products’ impacts in a comparable and consistent way. This way, companies can make informed, sustainable choices, while customers and stakeholders gain clearer insights into the products they use or invest in.
The ISO 14040 series is widely regarded as the gold standard for environmental impact assessment for several reasons:
Greenly offers specialized LCA services that extend beyond basic compliance. Greenly's LCA solution empowers businesses to not only assess but also optimize their product's environmental performance. By leveraging Greenly's expertise and advanced tools, companies can enhance transparency, competitive advantage, and sustainability practices.
Greenly tailors LCA to your specific needs, ensuring flexibility and relevance across diverse business scenarios. Our processes adhere to industry standards like ISO 14040 and 14044, providing baseline impact information across all product phases.
Get in touch with Greenly today to explore our LCA services and start your journey towards a more sustainable future.
Curious about Greenly's approach to life cycle assessments (LCA)? Let's take a closer look at how Greenly conducts an LCA, using the textile industry as an example.
Greenly conducted an LCA for CABAÏA, a clothing brand, adhering to industry standards from ADEME and AFNOR. This thorough assessment provided insights into the environmental impact of the company's products. For more details on this case study, visit Greenly's website.
1. Raw material analysis
2. Product manufacture
3. Transportation
4. Usage
5. End of life
Greenly offers a comprehensive suite of services to help your business enhance its sustainability efforts. Beyond conducting Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Greenly provides various tools and strategies to promote environmental responsibility and reduce carbon emissions. Here's how we can help your business become more sustainable:
With Greenly's expertise, your business can significantly reduce its environmental impact, achieve ESG goals, and improve sustainability while making informed business decisions. Contact us today to begin your journey towards a more sustainable future.