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Each product has a narrative. From the uncooked supplies used to create it, to the power it consumes, to the place it finally ends up when it’s now not helpful— every stage impacts the surroundings. Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, assist us estimate that affect and establish areas for enchancment all through a product’s life cycle.
LCAs assist companies perceive the environmental footprint of their merchandise, processes, or providers throughout each stage of their life cycle. From power use to water consumption, LCAs reveal essential information that may drive extra sustainable choices.
What’s a Life Cycle Evaluation (LCA)?
A Life Cycle Evaluation evaluates the complete life cycle of a product, together with*:
- Uncooked materials extraction. One instance is sourcing minerals, metals, or pure fibers.
- Supplies and product manufacturing — reminiscent of changing supplies into completed merchandise.
- Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
- Utilization — reminiscent of sources consumed when a product is in use.
- Finish-of-life — what occurs to a product after use: as an illustration, recycling, reuse, or landfill disposal.
LCAs estimate the environmental affect at every stage, offering an image of a product’s footprint. Companies depend on LCAs to establish the place the best impacts happen and discover alternatives to cut back their environmental affect.
* Be aware, the examples listed above aren’t exhaustive and are supposed to be illustrative.
What do LCAs estimate?
LCAs transcend simply evaluating a product’s carbon footprint to incorporate matters reminiscent of water consumption, power demand, useful resource depletion, waste era, and air pollution. Let’s take the instance of a seemingly easy T-shirt to discover an instance of what could be measured:
World Warming Potential (GWP): LCAs estimate the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) that contribute to local weather change. For a T-shirt, these emissions happen at each stage—from producing cotton to powering factories and transporting the completed product.
Blue Water Consumption (Water utilization): LCAs estimate how a lot recent water is consumed throughout manufacturing and product use. For instance, producing sufficient cotton for a single T-shirt can require 1000’s of liters of water, with extra water used for dyeing, washing, and cleansing the shirt over its lifetime.
Main Power Demand (Power consumption): LCAs consider the power sources used to supply, distribute, and energy a product. For a T-shirt, this consists of working textile equipment in factories and transporting the shirt across the globe.
Ecotoxicity (Waste and air pollution): LCAs estimate pollution that have an effect on air, water, and land. In T-shirt manufacturing, chemical dyes and by merchandise can doubtlessly pollute water sources, and the shirt itself may finally find yourself in a landfill.
Abiotic Depletion Potential (Useful resource depletion): LCAs estimate using finite sources like metals, minerals, and fossil fuels. In our T-shirt instance, rising cotton depletes soil vitamins, whereas producing artificial fibers like polyester depends on fossil fuels.
By capturing this full vary of environmental impacts, LCAs empower companies to prioritize extra sustainable actions throughout their operations and product design.
Why LCAs matter for companies
LCAs generally is a highly effective software for driving innovation and lowering environmental affect.
They’ll provide tangible advantages for companies aiming to satisfy their sustainability objectives. By figuring out essentially the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, firms can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement adjustments reminiscent of utilizing renewable power to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that scale back their general affect. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which can be extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with lowered resource-intensiveness and environmental affect.
For instance, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are decided in the course of the design part.1 LCAs may also help evaluate alternate options and perceive trade-offs when choosing parts, course of steps or disposal varieties. By integrating LCAs early within the design course of, firms can enhance sustainability outcomes.
Publishing LCA outcomes helps to boost company transparency and assist environmental reporting. Sharing these reviews builds belief with clients, workers, traders, and different stakeholders, whereas guaranteeing compliance with world sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.
How are LCAs carried out?
Conducting an LCA is a structured course of that entails gathering information throughout each part of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and deciphering the outcomes to assist initiatives like net-zero objectives and round product design.
LCAs observe globally accepted requirements, such because the Worldwide Group for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 and 14044. There are different requirements which can be additionally based mostly on ISO’s framework.
Cisco’s method to Life Cycle Assessments
At Cisco, LCAs play a key position in our efforts to estimate and decrease the environmental affect of our merchandise.
Not too long ago, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly obtainable, sharing LCAs for a variety of our merchandise on the Sustainability Assets part of our web site. Cisco has already accomplished 23 LCAs throughout 8 enterprise items prior to now two years and plans to publish extra assessments throughout key product strains in 2025. Sharing these outcomes helps transparency and demonstrates our dedication to measurable progress.
Whereas many expertise firms publish LCAs, Cisco is likely one of the first to supply them for networking tools, reminiscent of Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace and Provide Chain Sustainability groups proceed to associate with our colleagues throughout the corporate to supply these reviews, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they turn out to be obtainable.
LCAs are a part of how we method sustainability holistically. LCA information helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and sources which can be reused, repurposed, and stored in circulation for so long as doable. By evaluating the whole lot from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve essential insights that information our product design and innovation.
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