Life-cycle assessment

Whether you’re in manufacturing, distribution or the service industry, a life-cycle assessment is a systematic approach to capture a complete picture of the environmental impact of your operations at every stage of producing a product or delivering a service, allowing you to make more sustainable decisions for your business.

Chrystal Healy, Assistant Vice President, Corporate Sustainability at BDC, explains that understanding the entire life cycle of your products or service helps identify the areas where you might have influence and control over the environmental impact of your activities.

What is the purpose of a life-cycle assessment?

The purpose of an LCA is twofold:

• it helps you identify where environmental impacts occur in a process, the production of a product or the delivery of a service
• it empowers you to minimize those impacts

You can prioritize your sustainability efforts by understanding where the most significant environmental effects are—whether that’s from energy use, raw material extraction or waste generation. This can result in environmental benefits and\or cost savings. As an example, reducing energy use in production or manufacturing can lower utility costs, while reducing packaging materials may lower waste disposal costs.

When to consider conducting a life-cycle assessment

A life-cycle assessment can give you a complete picture of your environmental impact and where opportunities exist whenever you launch a new product, improve an existing one, or try to reduce environmental impacts. Its of particular interest for companies wishing to communicate the environmental benefits of a product. Moreover, showing that you are doing the work to address sustainability in a meaningful way can provide a strong selling point for environmentally-conscious consumers.

An LCA is less justified for products that change frequently, like fast fashion items or rapidly evolving electronics, due to their short life cycles and frequent updates. In contrast, it can be worthwhile for commodities and products with longer life cycles, such as building materials or vehicles, where the environmental impacts are more stable and meaningful over time.

Carrying out a life-cycle assessment

The LCA evaluates the entire life span of a specific process, product or service, from cradle to grave. For example, if you’re assessing a mobile phone, you would consider everything from the extraction of the raw materials to design of the phone, the energy used in its production, the impact of its use and how it is disposed of at the end of its life.

Conducting a life-cycle assessment is a detailed, multi-step process that can be broken down into four key stages:

1. Goal and scope definition

Clearly define what you want to assess and the boundaries of the assessment. Are you evaluating a single product or an entire service?

2. Inventory analysis

Gather data on all material and energy inputs, as well as any outputs like emissions or waste. This type of data can sometimes be available from suppliers and is the backbone of the LCA and requires extensive data collection.

3. Impact assessment

This is where you evaluate the data to understand the environmental impacts. What’s the carbon footprint of your manufacturing process? How much waste does your product generate at the end of its life?

4. Interpretation

Finally, interpret the results to make informed decisions. What stage has the greatest environmental impact? How can you reduce your energy consumption? Could you switch to more sustainable materials?

Check in with your suppliers

LCAs are not something to dive into lightly; they require data, time and resources. However, there are models and tools available that can help you ease into the process. Even if you’re not conducting an LCA yourself, you can request information from suppliers and large manufacturers who have already done the work, helping you make more responsible purchasing decisions.

Life-cycle assessment examples

Several key factors emerge when comparing electric and traditional cars through an LCA. Electric vehicles (EVs) generally produce fewer GHG emission over their lifetime compared to traditional internal combustion engine vehicles , especially when powered by clean energy. However, EV production, particularly their batteries, is more resource-intensive and generates higher initial emissions. The overall benefit of EVs depends on the electricity mix used for charging and the vehicle’s lifespan.

Healy emphasizes that when comparing products through an LCA, the results can be quite nuanced and underscore the importance of considering the entire life cycle of a product when evaluating its environmental impact.

“An electric car operating in a region without green electricity is not equivalent to an electric car in an area with green electricity,

How much does a life-cycle assessment cost?

The cost of conducting an LCA varies widely, depending on the complexity of the product or service and the depth of the analysis. For smaller businesses with straightforward products, the analysis could cost a few thousands of dollars. The cost could easily exceed tens of thousands of dollars for larger, more complex products or services.

The availability of data is also a factor. The cost may be lower if much of the necessary data is already available.

Is there a system for conducting a life-cycle assessment?

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 is a recognized framework that provides a standardized approach to conducting an LCA. Businesses that work within this standard ensure that their LCA processes are consistent and credible. This level of rigour can add significant value, especially if your clients are asking for sustainability certifications.

Life-cycle assessment and the circular economy

The circular economy is a production model that aims to reduce waste to a minimum through sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products to extend their life cycle.

Meanwhile, an LCA provides a detailed, systematic approach to identify areas where waste reduction and resource efficiency can be improved. By conducting an LCA, businesses can uncover opportunities to make their processes more circular.

“By undertaking an LCA, you may identify a by-product from your manufacturing that is a useful input to another industry’s production,” says Healy. For example, food processing waste can be used to produce animal feed..

Challenges of life-cycle analysis

Despite its many benefits, conducting an LCA is not without its challenges. It can be incredibly data-intensive and time-consuming, requiring that you gather and interpret a vast amount of information.

Healy points out that the value of an LCA is also very dependent on the decisions you make throughout the process. “Defining system boundaries and selecting appropriate impact assessment methods can be problematic..” She adds, “The quality of the data that was used determines the quality of the LCA findings.”

Despite these challenges, LCA remains a crucial tool for understanding and mitigating the environmental impacts of products and processes. By continuously improving LCA methodologies and tools, we can enhance their reliability and applicability, ultimately supporting more sustainable decision-making and fostering a circular economy.

Next step 

Download the greenhouse gas calculator toolkit to estimate your footprint and identify areas where to take meaningful action.