How Important Is A Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment?

As consumers become more conscious of the environmental consequences of manufacturing and producing various products, more brands and businesses are joining the sustainable movement. Brands must examine their supply chains and product designs to find opportunities to reduce their water footprint, decrease waste and pollution, and curb carbon emissions in order to lessen their impact.

Most importantly, in order to advance, one must be aware of where they are. You can determine how much more you can do and how much more needs to be done by tracking the progress of your sustainability efforts and initiatives. This will help you understand what has been accomplished in relation to your sustainability strategy. A life cycle assessment (LCA) can certainly help you find the answers and provide insightful information about your supply chains if you're wondering how much positive impact your sustainable products have, how to increase the resource efficiency of your supply chains, or even what effect reduction goals your brand or business should have. Making accurate environmental data about your products and supply chains through an LCA will make sure that your sustainability claims are unassailable.

Here, we will tell you more about the significance of a life cycle sustainability assessment.

What is a life cycle assessment?

The term "life cycle assessment" (LCA) refers to the process of determining how a process, service, or product will affect the environment over its entire life cycle. LCA is viewed as a valuable and trustworthy tool for evaluating the environmental impact of goods and services, despite its drawbacks and difficulties. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) both acknowledge LCA as a valid methodology. Every stage of a product's life cycle, including taking resources from the environment, developing the product, using it, and disposing of it after use, can have an effect on the environment in different ways.

These phases of a product's life cycle are known as "life cycle stages." With LCA, you can assess the environmental effects of your service or product at any point during its life cycle, from the very beginning to the very end.

There are many ways that industrial activity affects the environment. Due to the reach of global supply chains, some of these are immediate, while others may happen far from the company's actual location. In all its forms, industry depends on a wide range of processes and activities; different resources are used up in the process, and different substances are released. The extent to which these material interactions with the environment are harmful to both human health and natural ecosystems can be determined using an LCA.

A practitioner will establish metrics when performing an LCA to quantify the various inputs (such as energy, water, and land) and outputs (such as wastes, products, and emissions) that take place over the course of the life cycle of an industrial process, commodity, or technology. It enables a system's energy, resource, and material flows to be mapped by an assessor. These are precise measurements that keep tabs on specific quantities like weight, mass, or volume. They are gathered as a component of the life cycle inventory (LCI).

The life cycle inventory assessment (LCIA), which takes place later in the study, interprets the LCI data to reflect actual effects on human health or the environment. For instance, one plastic fork might require a certain amount of petroleum. The LCA shows a record of this. This measurement is used in the LCA to determine how much it contributes to global warming.

What are the benefits of life cycle assessment?

Here are the benefits that a business can get from an LCA:

1. An LCA provides your sustainability strategy's quantitative foundation and assists you in making practical sustainability decisions.

LCAs calculate the amount of energy, water, and raw materials used, as well as the carbon dioxide and waste produced during the production of your goods. You will be able to pinpoint the point in your product's life cycle that requires the most resources, energy, and impact thanks to this holistic perspective. This assists you in identifying areas that need product design improvement, sourcing alternatives, and management evaluation of the need for operational or supply chain changes. Additionally, an LCA study can help you establish and achieve your sustainability objectives, such as reducing carbon emissions and improving energy efficiency.

1. An LCA gives you reliable information to support your sustainability claims.

You need reliable environmental data to support the external assertions you make regarding your products or services being sustainable as more laws are put in place to stop greenwashing. It is necessary to take energy and emissions into account throughout a product's life cycle in order to assess whether it is truly environmentally sound. Environmental information based on a life cycle assessment not only supports and strengthens your commitment to sustainability, but it also builds trust with stakeholders and clients.

1. LCA outcomes provide excellent insights for deliberate innovation.

You can learn which of your materials has the greatest potential to have a positive environmental effect by analyzing the supply chains of those materials. An LCA study enables you to compare and evaluate alternatives for products that combine a variety of materials, and LCA results provide you with a science-based framework to enhance the production processes of substitute fibers, particularly in the case of special fibers. Reaching out to your suppliers and collaborating with them on R&D will encourage you to boost the environmental advantages of your innovation.

1. An LCA increases the value of your brand and gives you a competitive edge.

An LCA demonstrates your brand's authenticity, credibility, and integrity in the sustainable products market. Data-driven transparency distinguishes you from competing brands. LCA provides you with impenetrable supply chain data that you can use to convince retailers of the benefits of your products' environmental performance.

1. You can establish cooperative relationships with your partners and suppliers thanks to an LCA.

Collaboration between suppliers and brands is necessary for LCA studies. Brands require a number of inputs from every stage of their supply chains in order to perform an LCA. If you don't have good relationships with your suppliers, collecting this data may be challenging. However, going through this process with suppliers could indeed help solidify the bond and promote collaboration. Most importantly, LCAs support efforts to increase supply chain transparency.

1. An LCA enables deeper connections with your customers.

LCA research aids in internal brand education regarding product and supply chain sustainability from the perspective of a life cycle. This provides science-based information for your marketing and PR teams to communicate the progress of your sustainability initiative. LCA can be used to develop sustainable storytelling about the positive effects your products have and to assist in informing consumers and retailers about your sustainability accomplishments. It increases brand value through transparency while fostering trust with stakeholders and customers. Providing consumers with hard evidence that your products or services are environmentally friendly also enables them to understand why their decision is the right one.

Are you looking for packaging that will greatly reduce your environmental impact? Don’t look any further. GPA Global has innovative sustainable packaging solutions to support your business’s sustainability efforts. They use LCA to inform their decisions when creating bespoke solutions for you and to ensure that their partners’ and clients’ sustainable initiatives are a success.