LCA

Life Cycle Assessment

The overall impacts of a product, service, or organization can be difficult to assess with a cursory analysis. An evaluation whether it is “green” or not is often based on the amount of waste generated or the energy or water used in production. However, this can give an incomplete picture. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was developed to assess a product’s overall environmental impacts over the entire life cycle of the product, including the production, transportation, use, and disposal of the product. An LCA acts as a lens – identifying areas for environmental performance improvements, assisting in decision making, and supporting marketing and eco-labeling campaigns.

To allow for the comparison of multiple products or stategies in LCA, a functional unit is carefully chosen. The functional unit expresses the shared functions of the studied products in quantitative terms and serves as the basis of LCA calculations and the unit of comparison.

LCA is comprised of 4 phases:

Goal and Scope Definition
The purpose of the LCA is specified, the functional unit is developed, the boundaries of the LCA are determined, and important assumptions are stated.
Inventory Analysis
The Inventory Analysis stage consists of developing a complete log of material, energy, and pollutant release flows through the life cycle.
Impact Assessment
The emissions and resources used in all phases of the life cycle are combined into a set of impact categories with the help of impact assessment models which describe overall environmental damages such as climate change and non-renewable resource use.
Interpretation
The meaning and results of the inventory and impact assessment are evaluated relative to the stated goals of the study.

Producing an LCA is iterative process, in which the findings at each stage influence changes in the other stages, with the overall mission to meet the defined goals of the LCA. We work closely with our clients in all stages, making sure to keep them in the loop during the whole LCA process.

We provided LCA services tailored for each client’s needs, from screening LCAs to ISO-compliant LCAs published in scientific journals. Contact us so we can help fit your needs.

Recent Projects

Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Disposable Facial Tissue Use versus Reusable Cotton Handkerchiefs

Ecosystem Analytics conducted this LCA as an example of how life cycle assessment can inform design making using 2 products that most people are very familiar with: disposable paper facial tissue and reusable cotton handkerchiefs. Instinctually, most people would deem that reusable cotton handkerchief use to be environmentally superior given that it produces less waste than disposable paper facial tissue. However, this cursory evaluation only takes into account the end-of-life phase. An LCA looks at all parts of the product’s life, from manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life.

After defining a functional unit based on the facial tissue and handkerchief use patterns, we determined the potential environmental impacts for each product. For the functional unit, this LCA found that there is no environmental advantage to using reusable handkerchiefs versus disposable facial tissue. All 4 endpoint impact categories — Climate Change, Human Health, Ecosystem Quality, and Resources are between 5 and 7 times greater for the handkerchief functional unit than those calculated for the facial tissue functional unit. Facial tissue end-of-life disposal, the prime reason why many would consider switching to handkerchief use, only accounts for 10% of climate change impacts. Using handkerchiefs exclusively was only found environmentally preferable when used for the entire useful life of the handkerchief (50 washes, or 9.4 years), following a use pattern that led to the lowest handkerchief versus facial tissue use rate for the same number of nose blows (1 handkerchief vs. 5 tissues), due to higher intensity of handkerchief use prior to washing.

For further information, see the executive summary of this LCA or the full LCA report.

Eileen Ekstrom presented this LCA at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) LCAXII Conference in Tacoma, Washington.