Home – Solutions – Sustainable Products and Circularity – Lifecycle Assessments (LCA)

Home – Solutions – Sustainable Products and Circularity – Lifecycle Assessments (LCA)
Anthesis is a global leader in delivering actionable Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) for organisations across sectors with a team of industry-leading experts.
LCAs can be either environmentally or socially focused, and follow a systematic framework to identify risks and opportunities, and to enable tangible improvements.
Our team of LCA experts focus on how the LCA results can be actioned to drive tangible improvements for our clients. For example, Anthesis services can include curated strategy sessions to help you understand how LCAs can support your goals.
We have experience with all major LCA methodologies and software systems and can support organisations with comprehensive and complete frameworks bespoke to their organisational circumstances. Our Life Cycle Assessments align with internationally accredited compliance and regulatory processes, including ISO 14040,14044 and 14075.
Anthesis works with clients to determine what type of LCA meets their objectives, we then identify the correct level of rigour and study goal and scope to meet those objectives.
Screening or Streamlined LCA: Applies the general principles of LCA to quickly identify materials and processes that contribute the most to the environmental footprint of a product or service. Anthesis can complete screening LCAs on a single product or group of products to provide an initial comparison of product/service alternatives.
ISO Compliant Assessments: Can align to a range of standards including ISO 14040, 14044, 14067, and 14075. Anthesis also completes environmental product declarations (EPDs) and PEF compliant studies.
Portfolio Level LCA: For clients who want to produce LCAs at scale for a whole portfolio or range of products, Anthesis offers PortfolioPro, our digital LCA software solution that enables clients to undertake LCA at scale across their products or procurement programmes.
Industry Level LCA: Anthesis works with business member groups and consortia, applying a life-cycle approach to measure environmental impacts across entire sectors. The results provide a benchmark and evidence base for developing industry-wide sustainability strategies and reduction targets.
Our consultants, strategists, analysts, and educators provide a range of additional LCA services, including the following:
Education and capacity building: We offer customized LCA training and education to help you build internal capacity to understand and undertake LCAs in-house.
Communication: Anthesis helps clients communicate LCA results effectively and defensibly to meet stakeholder engagement objectives in the public domain or B2B.
Reviews: Anthesis can act as third party independent critical LCA reviewers. Anthesis assesses LCAs for compliance with ISO and provides critical reviewer statements, we also review LCA tools and LCA methodologies.
Support with Scope 3 Calculations: Anthesis can support clients to improve their GHG inventory by integrating life cycle approaches into Scope 3 calculations.
LCA is a systematic framework for quantifying the environmental and social impacts of products, services, or systems across their entire life cycle. LCA can be used to analyse and compare the impact of different scenarios. With these results, impact hotspots can be identified across the life cycle to reduce the footprint of products services or systems. This can inform innovation and solutions to reduce environmental and social impact across a multitude of different impacts.
LCA has emerged as an essential and widely recognised science-based framework for better understanding the impacts of products, services, and systems. The growth of LCA coincides with a surge of legislation across the globe designed to improve compliance, efficiency, and management of products. LCA is an invaluable tool for companies looking to achieve their sustainability goals. Completing an LCA can also help to inform strategic decision-making and create business value.
Learn more about the basics of LCA, its importance in evaluating environmental impacts across product life cycles, and how digital tools such as Anthesis PortfolioPro are revolutionising LCA scalability and accuracy in our recent podcast episodes.
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1. Define Goal & Scope – Define the goal and scope of study to understand the objectives and intended applications, the boundaries of what is being assessed and the performance requirement that the product fulfils.
2. Inventory Analysis – Create an inventory of flows to and from nature, usually using a combination of primary and secondary data collected for each unit processes of the product system.
3. Impact Assessment – Convert inventory data into a series of meaningful environmental indicators (impact categories).
4. Interpretation – Carefully interpret the results to draw conclusions and make recommendations Conduct sensitivity analyses on key parameters to assess the robustness of the results.
When preparing yourself for an LCA, you should ask yourselves some key questions, including:
– What is the goal or purpose of the LCA?
– What is the product or system being assessed?
– How will you find and collect data about the product?
– What is the life cycle of the product or system being assessed?
– What environmental impacts are you interested in? For example, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, water use, etc.
Typical outputs include a summary report of key findings along with a more detailed report stating the method, assumptions, findings and recommendations. For ISO LCAs, you also expect an ISO standard report.
Anthesis can also support you in attaining external critical review (for ISO-compliance), establishing green claims and developing interactive dashboards to explore results.
A hotspot analysis demonstrates how each life cycle stage contributes to different environmental impacts. This enables the identification of areas in the life cycle which need prioritising for action.
A comparative assertion enables comparison of the environmental impacts of one or more products that perform the same function.
Screening LCAs are useful for identifying opportunities for environmental impacts reduction. They can serve to quickly gain an initial overview of the environmental impacts of a product using high level assumptions.
A product environmental footprint (PEF) is a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product’s lifecycle, from raw material extraction through production, use, and disposal. It aims to provide a holistic view of the environmental performance of a product. Like products, services can also have an environmental footprint.
A product carbon footprint (PCF) is a measure of the total greenhouse gas emissions directly and indirectly associated with all stages of a product’s lifecycle, from raw material extraction through production, use, and disposal. A PCF can be used to identify opportunities for reducing a product’s climate impact however, by excluding non-carbon indicators (e.g. water use, land-use etc.), PCF provide an incomplete environmental picture and can lead to burden shifting. Like products, services can also have a carbon footprint.
Burden shifting refers to the unintended transfer of environmental impacts from one stage of a product’s lifecycle, or from one environmental indicator to another. For example, the removal of product packaging may reduce impacts at the production stage of the lifecycle but result in higher product loss impacts during distribution and retail stages. A cradle-to-grave assessment helps to avoid this. Burden shifting from one indicator to another is often the result of focusing on a single aspect, such as carbon emissions. For example, switching from plastic to bio-based packaging may reduce carbon impacts, but could increase a product’s land and water footprint. Including multiple indicators in an LCA helps to avoid this.
An environmental hotspot is an area, process, or activity within a product’s lifecycle that has a disproportionately high environmental impact. Identifying hotspots helps prioritise impact reduction efforts on those areas with the greatest reduction potential.
Green claims are statements made by companies about the environmental benefits of their products, services, or practices. These claims are often used for marketing purposes and can include information about eco-friendly materials, sustainable production methods, or the reduction of environmental impacts. In the EU and UK, there is increasing regulatory scrutiny over these claims due to concerns about greenwashing—making misleading or unverified assertions. Companies face significant reputational, legal, and financial risks if green claims are found to be unsubstantiated or false. Conducting comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) is crucial to ensure that green claims are supported by credible evidence, providing transparency and credibility in environmental marketing.
Green claims are statements made by companies about the environmental benefits of their products, services, or practices. These claims are often used for marketing purposes and can include information about eco-friendly materials, sustainable production methods, or the reduction of environmental impacts. In the EU and UK, there is increasing regulatory scrutiny over these claims due to concerns about greenwashing—making misleading or unverified assertions. Companies face significant reputational, legal, and financial risks if green claims are found to be unsubstantiated or false. Conducting comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) is crucial to ensure that green claims are supported by credible evidence, providing transparency and credibility in environmental marketing.
LCA Lifecycle Stages – LCA studies can assess a product or service’s entire lifecycle or only a portion of it. Common assessment types include:
Gate-to-gate focuses on evaluating the environmental impacts within a single phase of the production process, from the entry of raw materials into a facility to the exit of finished products. This approach allows for detailed analysis and optimisation of specific production stages
Gate-to-gate focuses on evaluating the environmental impacts within a single phase of the production process, from the entry of raw materials into a facility to the exit of finished products. This approach allows for detailed analysis and optimisation of specific production stages
Cradle-to-grave refers to the comprehensive assessment of a product’s (or service’s) environmental impact from the extraction of raw materials (cradle) through manufacturing, distribution, and use, to its final disposal (grave). This full lifecycle analysis ensures that all stages of the product’s life are considered, providing a complete picture of its environmental footprint.
Cradle-to-cradle in terms of LCA is an approach that evaluates a product’s (or service’s) environmental impact throughout its entire lifecycle, from raw material extraction (cradle) to the end of its useful life, where the materials are intended to be reused or recycled into new products (cradle). Unlike cradle-to-grave, which ends with disposal, cradle-to-cradle accounts for the potential for materials to be continuously cycled back into production, aiming to minimise waste and promote sustainability.