4 things you need to ask yourself before your company orders an LCA
A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool that provides deep insight into a product's environmental impact. But is it right for your business? You can learn more here.
What is an LCA?
The three letters LCA stand for Life Cycle Assessment, which can be used to assess the environmental impact of a product or service. An LCA is based on extensive preparatory work and is resource-intensive to complete.
Ask yourselves 4 questions
We usually ask companies to ask themselves 4 questions before investing time and money in a life cycle assessment. This way, they ensure they get the best out of the process.
1. Is an LCA really what we need?
Many people have a vague idea of what an LCA can actually do, and often it ends up that I, together with a company, find that something other than an LCA is needed to meet the demand.
If the company wants an overview of its total CO2 emissions and a strategy for reduction, it needs a climate report. In other cases, we need to create an ERP integration so that the company can send invoices to customers with the CO2 footprint of the purchased product, and other times something is wanted that can be used in marketing. The common thing is that it can be done with simpler means than an LCA, and of course we do that.
As soon as you say LCA, it should follow an ISO standard (14040/44), which dictates a wide range of technical requirements and which results in a report of 50 - 100 pages, so it is important to have an open discussion with your advisor before starting work on an LCA.
2. What will we use it for?
Once you have decided to get an LCA, you need to carefully consider how the company intends to use it.
Life cycle assessments come in 3 different general versions:
Comparative
It typically involves comparing two products, systems or services that are supposed to fulfill the same function but in different ways – for example, a disposable bottle compared to a refillable bottle. But it is a complicated process, and it requires just as good data for what you want to compare it to as the data you have about your own product.
Hotspot analysis
It maps the value chain and life cycle of a single product, and is typically used if you want to improve your environmental performance by changing existing processes or material choices.
Declaration
Is a document that "simply" declares what a product has cost in terms of the various environmental parameters that we measure; e.g. CO2 emissions, acidification of aquatic environments and emissions of particles. A concrete example of declarations is EPD - i.e. the type of life cycle assessment used for construction products, which makes it possible to carry out LCA on new, larger buildings, which is today a legal requirement.
3. How do we collect the data that is needed?
An LCA is no better than the data it is based on, and it is a huge amount of digging that the company itself is best placed to do – and it is surprising how extensive the work is.
It is not enough to just say that steel is used. We need to know the quality and know where it is processed and shaped, and how it is transported around. If your company has injection moulded moulds in a Chinese factory, you need to find out how many kilowatts the process uses, where the electricity comes from, and perhaps also how much and what type of lubricant is used for their machines.
So you need to be ready to engage in dialogue with your subcontractors, regardless of whether they are located in Denmark or around the world.
4. An LCA provides lots of insights – are we ready to exploit them?
There are almost always bonus insights to be found in an LCA because it is so comprehensive and detailed.
I have had a customer who actually ordered an LCA declaration to say they had one, but who had an eye-opener when they saw the impact of their processes on freshwater environments. They were then able to implement and replace a cleaning agent that the LCA identified as a negative factor. And they were able to identify which machines had the greatest environmental impact and which they are now prioritizing to replace first.
So the work of an LCA is large and comprehensive, but there is always plenty of gold on the pages with results that you pay for. Be ready to grab them!
