Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society

As society’s environmental awareness increases, more and more industries and businesses are assessing how their activities affect the environment.

The environmental performance of products and processes has become a key issue, and many companies want to move beyond compliance to pollution prevention strategies and environmental management systems that will improve their own performance.

LCA is a key tool which considers the entire life cycle of a product, giving a “cradle-to-grave” approach for assessing industrial systems.

It enables the estimation of cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life cycle, often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses, such as raw material extraction, material transportation and ultimate product disposal.

LCA therefore provides a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product and process selection. The chart below illustrates the possible life cycle stages that can be considered in an LCA and the typical inputs/outputs measured.