A Life Cycle Assessment can give anyone working in Supply Chain Management or Procurement actionable insights into which company they should source from. That means that sourcing from different suppliers can have a massive impact on your product footprint.įor Supply Chain Managers, choosing the right supplier is often a hard decision, where far more factors than just price play a role. In many industries, the supply chain accounts for more than 80 % of the environmental impact. One use case for an LCA might be that R&D compares two different materials and how these different materials influence the environmental impact of the end product. This can be for many reasons – corporate policy, regulations, customer demand – but oftentimes, it simply means being more efficient with company resources. New products should be as low in emissions as possible. To comply with these regulations, or optimizing existing products so they comply in the future, can be important for the product department. These tenders require companies to disclose the environmental data of their products – and you would have to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment for that.Ī company that provides asphalt for a public road-building project might, for example, needs to provide the environmental footprint of that product to take part in that tender. In some countries, there are standardized tenders for public projects. Often, companies need to simply comply with regulations to continue doing business. There are two reasons why a Life Cycle Assessment can be interesting for product management. Product Management / Research & Development (R&D) That’s because you can only make decisions on things you’ve actually measured before.Īccording to our data, the following 4 departments in your company can take action based on an LCA right away. If you think about who might be interested in knowing more about the impact of your company, you could probably name everybody.įor example, HR managers might argue that potential candidates find it interesting to know more about the environmental footprint of their future employer.īut LCA is a very specific analysis. It provides the groundwork for any sustainability or CSR strategy within a company. If you want to get the free PDF, click here (no signup required).īefore we dive into how a Life Cycle Assessment works, let’s break down who needs it in the first place. Heads up: We dive into detail in this article – but we’ve also got a 1-page quick guide to LCA. LCA Standards and the legal situation – a quick overview.The 4 Phases of a Life Cycle Assessment.What are the different phases in a product’s lifecycle? ![]() Who is it relevant for? Who can benefit from it? Who needs an LCA? And why? Why we should conduct an LCA in the first place.In this guide, we go through the concept of a Life Cycle Assessment step-by-step. For example, to make a product more sustainable. That’s why it is always designed with a specific goal in mind. The goal of an LCA is to not only create data but also to facilitate decisions. This is why the Life Cycle Assessment provides a framework for measuring the environmental impact of, for example, a product. With all these factors – it gets confusing quickly. How did the goods get transported? Via truck, rail, or airplane?Ī clear framework for measuring environmental impact.How do my goods get produced? What about heating, water, and ventilation?.Which raw materials were involved in the production process, and where do they come from? What about soil, seeds, and fertilizer?.An LCA measures the environmental impact of a product through every phase of its life – from production to waste (or recycling, etc.).īut LCA isn’t simple – there are countless factors involved: This, in a nutshell, is the question that a Life Cycle Assessment tries to answer. “How environmentally friendly were the products I just bought? Should I have bought the tomatoes from The Netherlands or from Spain?“ You probably asked yourself that question many times (sometimes without even knowing it). ![]() What environmental impact does one object have on the world? LCA software tools What is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?
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