The life cycle assessment method is growing as a way to meeting rising demands from customers and regulators for demonstrating environmental performance and continuous improvement over time. In a time when the term “sustainability” is recognizably vague, a comprehensive, transparent methodology is required to show credible metrics that avoid unintended environmental consequences and can be backed by international standards. It is estimated that the number of product LCAs that are conducted in the US is rising between 30-40% annually, and even more so in some European markets.

There are multiple benefits and applications of LCA, which together can form a large part of a company’s entire sustainability strategy. Some of them include:

Eco-Design. Companies can use LCA to identify materials and production processes with reduced environmental impacts. Or some LCAs show the importance of design innovations that are focused on the use phase (i.e. low-temperature laundry detergent, Dyson AirBlade hand dryer), or end-of-life phase (i.e. recycling is not always superior to incineration).

Credibly meeting sustainability goals. Tracking metrics over time using LCA can form a basis for decision making, customer communication, and CSR reporting. LCA allows tracking real impacts from the entire supply chain, as opposed to merely tracking facility emissions, which can lead to purported reductions by outsourcing operations overseas (an example of burden shifting).

Green marketing, without greenwashing. Take the lead in your industry, bringing science-based, standards-compliant information to your customers in order to establish a competitive advantage. And because LCA breaks a company’s impacts down by life cycle phase, the most relevant information can be communicated to different supply chain customers.

Regulatory compliance and risk management. Companies can understand in advance the environmental risks that may suddenly become regulatory red flags, their dependence on critical raw materials, and their exposure to interruptions in supply.

The below graph shows the response of executives when asked what they perceive to be the largest business benefits of LCA:

Direct Benefits

From the high profile Fortune 500 companies, down to the small businesses that have a strong sustainability ethic, many companies are using LCA to achieve several direct economic benefits.

LCA Helps Reduce Costs

By finding inefficient use of energy

By identifying excess waste

By suggesting how to reduce environmental pollution

…all of which are associated with unnecessary costs which can be better managed.

LCA Helps Increase Revenues

By responding to customer inquiries, helping to maintain customer relationships

By marketing sustainability performance

By committing to understand and reduce their environmental impact

By avoiding greenwashing through use of international standards and dependable consultants.

By gaining access to markets that require or give preference to LCA (such as: building products for LEED certification, WalMart’s Sustainability Index, Green Seal, EPA Renewable Fuel Standard, etc.)

How To Be Strategic About Applying LCA

It is important to understand the business value that conducting an LCA will bring to your product line, brand value, and supplier and customer relationships. This will help a business benefit optimally from the investment to study their product impacts.

Many companies have found it useful to take the approach of looking in the mirror, rather than pointing fingers. That is, while LCA can help you establish a comparative claim against a competitor, this can cause others to scrutinize over assumptions, methods, and data used in such a study. It is more responsible to use LCA to set a baseline for environmental performance, and improve that performance over time, and take this message to your customers.

Choose wisely. It is crucial to select the right product to study. If cost is a large constraint, it should be understood that the information needed to conduct the analysis requires time and resources, so it is better to choose a product that is less complex to produce and assemble. If marketing is a key objective, then a best-selling product can be analyzed to provide exposure to what the company is doing to be more sustainable.

Create a plan. What are the goals of the analysis? How will the analysis be performed? Who will conduct it? How will you work with suppliers to collect information, and how will you hope to communicate with customers once you have the results? Please feel free to contact us for more guidance through this process, and to answer any questions you may have.