Life Cycle Assessment
Understanding impact across the full system
When discussing sustainability, it is tempting to focus on what is visible. Packaging, transport, or origin often dominate the conversation. But environmental impact is rarely determined by a single factor. It is the result of a chain of processes—many of which remain out of sight. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method developed to bring structure to that complexity. It evaluates the environmental impact of a product or service across its entire life cycle; from raw material extraction and production to use and end-of-life.
LCA addresses the question: where in the system do impacts occur, and how do they add up?
Looking beyond the obvious
Every product goes through a series of stages before it reaches its end of life. Resources are extracted, materials are processed, products are manufactured, transported, used, and eventually disposed of. At each of these stages, resources such as energy, water, and raw materials are used, and emissions are released to air, water, and soil. LCA brings these elements together into a single framework, making it possible to assess the overall environmental impact of a product system. One of the key insights this provides is the identification of hotspots; the stages in the life cycle where the largest impacts occur. These are not always where you expect them. In many cases, production dominates over transport, or raw material choices outweigh packaging decisions.
By taking a full-system perspective, LCA helps avoid shifting impacts from one stage to another without realizing it, which is a common risk when decisions are made based on partial information.
A structured, but not simplified, method
LCA is not just a concept, but it follows an internationally standardized framework, generally defined in standards such as the ISO 14040 series. This framework structures an LCA into four main phases:
defining the goal and scope
compiling the life cycle inventory (data on inputs and outputs)
assessing environmental impacts
interpreting the results
This structure ensures transparency and consistency. At the same time, it makes clear that LCA involves choices. Decisions about system boundaries, data sources, and modelling approaches all influence the outcome. An LCA is therefore not a direct measurement of reality, but a model. It is a structured representation of a complex system. The quality of the results depends not only on the data, but also on how these choices are made and communicated.
From data to decisions
At its core, LCA translates large amounts of data into insight. It connects resource use and emissions to environmental impact categories such as climate change, land use, or water use. In doing so, it reveals trade-offs: reducing one type of impact may increase another. This makes LCA particularly valuable for decision-making. For companies, it highlights where improvements are most effective; whether in sourcing, production processes, or product design. For policymakers, it provides a basis for developing and evaluating measures. And for the wider system, it creates a common language to compare products and strategies.
At the same time, translating LCA results into action is not straightforward. Results can be complex, and simplifying them, without losing meaning, is a challenge. This is especially relevant when results are used for communication, for example in environmental labelling.
Why consistency matters
As LCA is used more widely, the question of comparability becomes increasingly important. Different methodological choices and use of different data sources can lead to different results. Without alignment, comparing products or drawing conclusions at a broader level becomes difficult. This is why standardization and harmonization play a central role. International standards such as the ISO 14040 series provide a common foundation, ensuring that studies are carried out in a consistent and transparent way. There are also other frameworks, like EC’s Product Environmental Footprint method, GHG Protocol and SBTi, which ensure a certain level of harmonization. Harmonization does not remove uncertainty, but it creates a shared basis for analysis and discussion.
Consistency is important, but the context and goal of an assessment should not be forgotten. Different frameworks can serve different purposes, like product footprinting, corporate reporting, or setting targets. In a perfect world corporate reporting could be the sum of a companies product footprints, but this is still a large work in progress.
Making complexity useful
Sustainability challenges are inherently complex. There are trade-offs, uncertainties, and multiple perspectives to consider. LCA does not simplify that complexity, but it makes it manageable. By structuring information, identifying hotspots, and making impacts comparable, it provides a foundation for better decisions. Not perfect ones, but more informed ones. And in a field where intuition can be misleading, that makes a significant difference.