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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 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 companies throughout each stage of their life cycle. From power use to water consumption, LCAs reveal crucial 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 — akin to changing supplies into completed merchandise.
- Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
- Utilization — akin to assets 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.
* Observe, the examples listed above will not be exhaustive and are supposed to be illustrative.
What do LCAs estimate?
LCAs transcend simply evaluating a product’s carbon footprint to incorporate subjects akin 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 will be measured:
International 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 further water used for dyeing, washing, and cleansing the shirt over its lifetime.
Main Vitality Demand (Vitality consumption): LCAs consider the power assets used to provide, distribute, and energy a product. For a T-shirt, this consists of 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 doubtlessly pollute water sources, and the shirt itself may finally find yourself in a landfill.
Abiotic Depletion Potential (Useful resource depletion): LCAs estimate the usage of finite assets 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 software for driving innovation and lowering environmental affect.
They will provide tangible advantages for companies aiming to fulfill their sustainability targets. By figuring out essentially the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, firms can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement adjustments akin to utilizing renewable power to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that cut back their total affect. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which can be extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with decreased resource-intensiveness and environmental affect.
For instance, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are decided throughout the design part.1 LCAs might help examine 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 experiences builds belief with clients, workers, traders, and different stakeholders, whereas making certain compliance with world sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.
How are LCAs carried out?
Conducting an LCA is a structured course of that includes gathering knowledge throughout each part of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and deciphering the outcomes to assist initiatives like net-zero targets 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 primarily based on ISO’s framework.
Cisco’s strategy to Life Cycle Assessments
At Cisco, LCAs play a key function 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 out there, sharing LCAs for a lot 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 further assessments throughout key product strains in 2025. Sharing these outcomes helps transparency and demonstrates our dedication to measurable progress.
Whereas many know-how firms publish LCAs, Cisco is without doubt one of the first to provide them for networking tools, akin to Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace and Provide Chain Sustainability groups proceed to companion with our colleagues throughout the corporate to provide these experiences, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they change into out there.
LCAs are a part of how we strategy sustainability holistically. LCA knowledge helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and assets which can be reused, repurposed, and stored in circulation for so long as attainable. By evaluating all the things from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve crucial insights that information our product design and innovation.
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