2.6

Life Cycle Assessment: Calculating Product Footprints

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product, process, or service’s existence, often referred to as a ‘cradle-to-grave’ analysis.

The goal is to provide a comprehensive, holistic view, ensuring that solving an environmental issue in one phase doesn’t simply create a worse problem in another (known as ‘shifting the burden’). LCAs are essential tools for informing decisions on product design, policy, and overall sustainability strategies.

This video gives you a beginner’s introduction to LCA.

For an example of LCA you can watch the ‘Case Study: Life Cycle Assessment of a Bamboo Toothbrush’ here.

The Life Cycle Stages

LCA examines the environmental inputs (energy, resources) and outputs (emissions, waste) across the full life span of a product, which typically includes:

Raw Material Acquisition/Extraction: Obtaining the necessary resources from the environment.
Manufacturing and Processing: Transforming raw materials into the finished product.
Distribution and Transportation: Moving the product from the factory to the consumer.
Use Phase: The environmental impact that occurs while the product is being used (e.g., energy consumption, maintenance).
End-of-Life: What happens after the product is no longer useful (e.g., disposal, recycling, reuse).

If you want to make your own LCAs, you can try an open source, free tool – openLCA – here, and the Life Cycle Assessment: Quantitative Approaches and Methods book is free to download here.

Further reading, learning and references

Matthews, H.S., Hendrickson, C.T. and Matthews, D.H. (2021) Life Cycle Assessment: Quantitative Approaches and Methods https://lcatextbook.com/

openLCA https://www.openlca.org

UN environment programme – Life Cycle Initiative https://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/resources/training

© Daniel Mossberg, CEMUS, Uppsala University and Sonali Phadke, studio Alternatives and Stephanie Foote