The Importance of Life Cycle Assessments in Addressing Product-level Emissions
Recently, Neil had the privilege of hosting a fireside chat with Jamie McCroskery, Co-founder and CEO of Bluebird Climate. The dialogue revolved around green product redesign, the criticality of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), and the pioneering work Bluebird Climate is doing in bringing beauty and cosmetic brands up-to-speed on sustainability.
Unpacking Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs)
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is four-step sustainability technical process for measuring product-level emissions to understand and minimize the environmental footprint of consumer products. They offer a comprehensive approach to improve product design, enrich sustainability reporting, and support net-zero targets. However, despite their importance, there are challenges to conducting accurate LCAs, primarily due to issues with data availability and precision.
Benefits of Conducting LCAs
Product Analysis & Green Redesign: LCAs shed light on every phase of a product's lifecycle, allowing organizations to identify areas for improvement. For instance, products with a high carbon footprint can be redesigned by opting for more sustainable materials or optimized for energy efficiency.
Sustainability Reporting & Marketing: Detailed LCAs provide in-depth information and data about a product's environmental impact. This data informs consumers about a product's sustainability credentials and supports the organization's environmental objectives.
Carbon Labeling Transparency: Carbon labeling is becoming increasingly popular, providing consumers with at-a-glance information on the emissions of the products they purchase— similar to nutrition labeling on food and beverages.
Policy & Regulations: With the rise of environmental policies such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) bills, especially across Europe and the United States, organizations have been incentivized to address product-level impacts across all parts of the value chain, including a product’s end-of-life.
Net Zero Goals & Implementation: LCAs enable organizations to track their journey towards net-zero emissions. By comprehending the emissions associated with each product, companies can discover opportunities to reduce their overall emissions.
Challenges of Conducting LCAs
Despite its importance and benefits, conducting LCAs presents several hurdles:
Data Availability: LCAs require comprehensive data on all materials and processes throughout a product's lifecycle. Acquiring this data can be difficult, especially for products that involve complex materials or processes.
Model Accuracy: The reliability of calculations hinges on the quality of the input data, which means any inaccuracies in the data will reflect in the final model.
System Boundaries: LCAs require the modeler or technology provider to decide on a system boundary for the LCA model, which can end up resulting in an incomplete product-level emission calculations.
Model Adaptability: LCAs can take a time to properly build, and assumptions need to be consistent in order to compare multiple products against each other for environmental performance. This can make the model hard to modify depending on the tool or platform used.
The Role of Technology and Services in Conducting Life Cycle Assessments
Today, innovative technology companies, such as Bluebird Climate are developing solutions that can address these challenges, making it easier for organizations to calculate and manage their LCAs. Using advancements in data analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, these solutions provide more accurate and reliable LCA estimates.
However, given complexity and bespoke-use cases, professional service providers and environmental modelers will still be an important resource to help organize measure and reduce product-level emissions. Promisingly however, partnerships are forming among technology and service providers to provide a win-win for organizations needing the help.
LCAs are a pivotal tool for organizations aiming to understand and reduce the environmental impact of their products. Despite the challenges in conducting Life Cycle Assessments, technological advancements are enabling more accurate and efficient calculations. Embracing such solutions is a crucial step towards sustainable product design and a greener future.
Conduct a Life Cycle Assessment with OnePointFive
If your organization is looking to deepen its understanding of LCAs and explore methods to achieve sustainable growth, there are numerous resources available.
We designed OnePointFive Academy, a 6-week Sustainability Professionals Accelerator, to equip individuals with the necessary skillsets required to excel in the sustainability sector.
OPF Academy focuses not only on understanding the principles of LCAs, but also on how they are built and modeled. Our goal is to ensure sustainability professionals have the practical skills they need to calculate, analyze, and interpret LCAs effectively. Moreover, the program covers a range of other critical topics in the sustainability sphere, including Net Zero Strategy Development, GHG Accounting, Standards & Disclosures, and Decarbonization Planning.
Watch the entire live event featuring Neil and Jamie on LinkedIn, and keep an eye out for more live events on our LinkedIn (OnePointFive), TikTok (@opf.degree), and Instagram (@opfdegree)!
