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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 impression 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 the whole 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 prospects.
- Utilization — akin to 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 impression 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 impression.
* 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 akin to water consumption, power demand, useful resource depletion, waste technology, and air pollution. Let’s take the instance of a seemingly easy T-shirt to discover an instance of what may 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 1000’s of liters of water, with further 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 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 might 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 could be a highly effective software for driving innovation and decreasing environmental impression.
They will supply 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 scale back their total impression. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which might be extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with lowered resource-intensiveness and environmental impression.
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 help examine alternate options and perceive trade-offs when choosing elements, course of steps or disposal sorts. 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 prospects, staff, traders, and different stakeholders, whereas making certain compliance with world sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.
How are LCAs performed?
Conducting an LCA is a structured course of that entails gathering knowledge throughout each part of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and decoding the outcomes to assist initiatives like net-zero targets and round product design.
LCAs comply with globally accepted requirements, such because the Worldwide Group for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 and 14044. There are different requirements which might be additionally based mostly on ISO’s framework.
Cisco’s strategy to Life Cycle Assessments
At Cisco, LCAs play a key position in our efforts to estimate and decrease the environmental impression of our merchandise.
Lately, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly obtainable, sharing LCAs for plenty of our merchandise on the Sustainability Sources part of our web site. Cisco has already accomplished 23 LCAs throughout 8 enterprise items previously two years and plans to publish further assessments throughout key product traces in 2025. Sharing these outcomes helps transparency and demonstrates our dedication to measurable progress.
Whereas many expertise firms publish LCAs, Cisco is without doubt one of the first to supply them for networking tools, akin to 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 change into obtainable.
LCAs are a part of how we strategy 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 acquire crucial insights that information our product design and innovation.
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