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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 setting. 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 companies throughout each stage of their life cycle. From power use to water consumption, LCAs reveal essential knowledge that may drive extra sustainable selections.
What’s a Life Cycle Evaluation (LCA)?
A Life Cycle Evaluation evaluates all the life cycle of a product, together with*:
- Uncooked materials extraction. One instance is sourcing minerals, metals, or pure fibers.
- Supplies and product manufacturing — comparable to changing supplies into completed merchandise.
- Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
- Utilization — comparable to sources consumed when a product is in use.
- Finish-of-life — what occurs to a product after use: as an example, 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.
* Word, the examples listed above are usually not exhaustive and are supposed to be illustrative.
What do LCAs estimate?
LCAs transcend simply evaluating a product’s carbon footprint to incorporate subjects comparable to 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 contemporary water is consumed throughout manufacturing and product use. For instance, producing sufficient cotton for a single T-shirt can require hundreds 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 contains operating 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 probably pollute water sources, and the shirt itself may ultimately 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 could be a highly effective device for driving innovation and lowering environmental affect.
They will 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 modifications comparable to utilizing renewable power to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that scale back their total affect. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which might be extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with diminished resource-intensiveness and environmental affect.
For instance, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are decided through the design section.1 LCAs will help evaluate alternate options and perceive trade-offs when choosing elements, 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 help environmental reporting. Sharing these studies builds belief with clients, workers, traders, and different stakeholders, whereas making certain compliance with international sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.
How are LCAs performed?
Conducting an LCA is a structured course of that entails gathering knowledge throughout each section of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and deciphering the outcomes to help 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 might be additionally primarily based on ISO’s framework.
Cisco’s method to Life Cycle Assessments
At Cisco, LCAs play a key function in our efforts to estimate and reduce the environmental affect of our merchandise.
Not too long ago, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly out there, sharing LCAs for plenty of our merchandise on the Sustainability Assets part of our web site. Cisco has already accomplished 23 LCAs throughout 8 enterprise models previously two years and plans to publish extra assessments throughout key product traces in 2025. Sharing these outcomes helps transparency and demonstrates our dedication to measurable progress.
Whereas many know-how firms publish LCAs, Cisco is among the first to supply them for networking gear, comparable to Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace and Provide Chain Sustainability groups proceed to companion with our colleagues throughout the corporate to supply these studies, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they turn out to be out there.
LCAs are a part of how we method sustainability holistically. LCA knowledge helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and sources which might be reused, repurposed, and stored in circulation for so long as potential. By evaluating all the pieces from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve essential insights that information our product design and innovation.
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