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Every 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 atmosphere. 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 providers throughout each stage of their life cycle. From power use to water consumption, LCAs reveal essential knowledge that may drive extra sustainable selections.
What is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?
A Life Cycle Assessment evaluates all the life cycle of a product, together with*:
- Raw materials extraction. One instance is sourcing minerals, metals, or pure fibers.
- Materials and product manufacturing — reminiscent of changing supplies into completed merchandise.
- Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
- Usage — reminiscent of assets consumed when a product is in use.
- End-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. Businesses depend on LCAs to establish the place the best impacts happen and discover alternatives to cut back their environmental impression.
* Note, the examples listed above should not 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 may be measured:
Global 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.
Primary Energy Demand (Energy consumption): LCAs consider the power assets 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 probably pollute water sources, and the shirt itself might ultimately find yourself in a landfill.
Abiotic Depletion Potential (Resource depletion): LCAs estimate using 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 is usually a highly effective device for driving innovation and decreasing environmental impression.
They can supply tangible advantages for companies aiming to fulfill their sustainability targets. By figuring out probably the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, firms can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement modifications reminiscent of utilizing renewable power to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that scale back their general impression. 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 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 also help examine alternate options and perceive trade-offs when deciding on 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 reinforce company transparency and assist environmental reporting. Sharing these studies builds belief with clients, workers, buyers, and different stakeholders, whereas guaranteeing compliance with world sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.
How are LCAs performed?
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 International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 and 14044. There are different requirements which can be additionally primarily based on ISO’s framework.
Cisco’s method to Life Cycle Assessments
At Cisco, LCAs play a key position in our efforts to estimate and reduce the environmental impression of our merchandise.
Recently, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly obtainable, sharing LCAs for numerous our merchandise on the Sustainability Resources part of our web site. Cisco has already accomplished 23 LCAs throughout 8 enterprise items up to now 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.
While many know-how firms publish LCAs, Cisco is without doubt one of the first to supply them for networking gear, reminiscent of Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Office and Supply Chain Sustainability groups proceed to accomplice with our colleagues throughout the corporate to supply these studies, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they grow to be obtainable.
LCAs are a part of how we method sustainability holistically. LCA knowledge helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and assets which can be reused, repurposed, and saved in circulation for so long as potential. By evaluating every thing from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve essential insights that information our product design and innovation.
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