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Each product has a narrative. From the uncooked supplies used to create it, to the vitality it consumes, to the place it finally ends up when it’s not helpful— every stage impacts the setting. Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, assist us estimate that impression and determine 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 vitality use to water consumption, LCAs reveal important information 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 prospects.
- Utilization — comparable to sources consumed when a product is in use.
- Finish-of-life — what occurs to a product after use: for example, 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 determine the place the best impacts happen and discover alternatives to cut back their environmental impression.
* Be aware, 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 matters comparable to water consumption, vitality 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 might 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 Vitality Demand (Vitality consumption): LCAs consider the vitality 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 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 lowering environmental impression.
They’ll provide tangible advantages for companies aiming to satisfy their sustainability objectives. By figuring out probably the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, corporations can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement modifications comparable to utilizing renewable vitality 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 throughout the design part.1 LCAs might help examine options and perceive trade-offs when deciding on elements, course of steps or disposal sorts. By integrating LCAs early within the design course of, corporations can enhance sustainability outcomes.
Publishing LCA outcomes helps to reinforce company transparency and help environmental reporting. Sharing these experiences builds belief with prospects, staff, traders, and different stakeholders, whereas making certain compliance with international 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 decoding the outcomes to help initiatives like net-zero objectives 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 can 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 decrease the environmental impression of our merchandise.
Just lately, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly out there, sharing LCAs for quite a few our merchandise on the Sustainability Sources 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 corporations publish LCAs, Cisco is among the first to supply them for networking tools, comparable 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 experiences, 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 information helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and sources which can be reused, repurposed, and saved in circulation for so long as potential. By evaluating all the pieces from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve important insights that information our product design and innovation.
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