Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) quantify the environmental impact of a product during its life cycle - from manufacture to disposal.
This “cradle to grave” type of analysis covers the impacts associated with the raw materials and energy used to produce the product as well as the impacts generated from further transportation, the in-use phase and end of life scenarios. This type of analysis can also be applied to the provision of services.
LCAs measure the environmental impact of a product by studying impact categories such as energy usage, eutrophication and toxicity. A more common impact category is that of global warming potential (GWP) where the impact of a product is measured in CO2 equivalents. This is generally referred to as a carbon footprint such as PAS 2050.
Variation between these calculations depends greatly on the level of detail and components of the life cycle studied. For example, differences of over 800% between Carbon Footprints are not uncommon when considering the complex issue effect of Land Use Change (see our work on this for the World Bank). This is why the Methods we have developed for LCAs are transparent and adaptable, so our clients, peer reviewers and future users of our data have no trouble seeing what is assessed and how.
We are committed to producing reliable and transparent calculations and follow the ISO14040 guidelines as minimum. Our work covers energy and materials and food stuffs and as a matter of course this includes study of transportation and infrastructure.
Like many Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), LCAs can be carried out speculatively. Though this is not common practice as they are strongly dependent on data availability, we provide these as extremely useful insights into the future environmental impacts when a client is considering process improvements, scale up, or entirely new products and services.
LCAs can be used to give an environmental profile, which can be used as a tool for promotion or comparison, such as an ISO 14025 Environmental Product Declaration. Where we provide a breakdown of impacts and their causes, improvements in future materials and manufacturing can be recommend.