LCA and Product Carbon Footprint

Measure Your Product Carbon Footprint / LCA

Expert-led, tech-powered carbon reduction designed for SME’s

Understand Your Product’s Lifecycle Journey And Impact

The principles of Life Cycle Assessment are becoming increasingly embedded in materials, manufacturing and even service-based sectors. LCAs allow a business to understand a product or service’s environmental impact; the starting point for data-driven decision making for any organisation.

Whether it is to meet current or forthcoming regulations, set organisational reduction targets, provide valuable environmental information to stakeholders, or for internal knowledge and product development, LCAs are becoming a key activity for businesses globally.

Your Questions Answered By Bryony, Head of Sustainability

What is the process for conducting a LCA?

Conducting a LCA consists of four interrelated stages including:

Goal &Scope: describing qualitatively the objective of the study and methodologies to be used
Life Cycle Inventory: the data collection stage
Life Cycle Impact Assessment: generating the results from the LCI
Interpretation and Reporting: communicating the results, highlighting the limitations of the study among many other aspects.

These phases are iterative during the lifetime of project., as new information comes to light, methods need to be adapted or additional scenarios need to be modelled.

Why conduct a Life Cycle Assessment?

There are many reasons to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment depending on the objectives of the study. Key reasons to conduct a LCA;

Find environmental hotspots. Understand which parts of your manufacturing and supply chain cause the most environmental impact.
Explore ways to reduce impact. Test different materials, consumables, processes, or designs.
Show your product is sustainable. Share clear, credible information with customers about your products environmental impact.
Improve product design and planning. Use LCA data to make smarter design and business decisions.
Support your sustainability reporting. LCA results can support other standards, for example for environmental labelling like EPDs.
Work with your suppliers. Use LCA to involve your supply chain in identifying and reducing environmental impacts.
Be ready for regulations and funding. LCA helps you respond to funding bids or tenders that ask for environmental impact data.

What is the difference between an LCA and EPD?

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a published document, highlighting the environmental impact of a product. The EPD document highlights the key elements of a background LCA study, according to a specific set of rules, called Product Category Rules (PCR). EPDs can seem daunting but Positive Planet can advise and support through the entire process, conducting and delivering the background LCA study and EPD document ready for publication following verification.

Positive Planet are the trusted sustainability partner for over 500 brands

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Every Meaningful Change Starts With A Conversation

If you are still not sure what to do, why don’t you get in touch and have a chat. We would love to talk through your current position, understand your goals and objectives, and help you create a plan to achieve them. There’s no obligation and you will take one step closer to net zero.

This could be the start of something immensely powerful.

Speak to a specialist 0161 524 2410 | Email us enquiries@positiveplanet.uk