More businesses than ever are turning to Life Cycle Assessments (LCA’s) to understand the environmental impact of their products, meet growing regulatory demands, respond to customer requests, and make smarter decisions across their supply chains.
But the process can feel unclear from the outside, especially if you haven’t completed one before. Where do you start? What do you actually need? And what do you do with the results?
What is a Life Cycle Assessment?
Think of an LCA as a holistic investigation of a product or process. In short, an LCA helps you understand the environmental impact at every life cycle stage, from raw materials to disposal.
A full LCA covers everything: the materials used to make your product, how it’s manufactured and distributed, what happens when it’s in use, and how it’s eventually disposed of or recycled.
Depending on your goals, an LCA can look at greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, land use, resource depletion, and other outputs to air, water, and soil. The result is a clear, evidence-based picture of where your environmental impacts sit, and where the biggest opportunities for improvement are.
Before You Start
The most effective LCAs start with a clear goal. Before we even get to the data, it’s always worth asking: what do you actually want to get out of this?
Are you looking to reduce costs, respond to a client request, comply with a regulation, market the product, or improve a product’s design? The answer shapes everything, including which lifecycle stages you’ll assess, which standard you’ll work to, and how you’ll use the results.
Getting this foundation right saves a significant amount of time later. It’s one of the first things our consultants work through with every client.
So how do you actually complete an LCA?
Michael Kenyon, Principal LCA Consultant:
“LCAs allow a business to understand a product or service’s environmental impact; the starting point for data-driven decision making for any organisation. Whether it is to meet current or forthcoming regulations, set organisational reduction targets, provide valuable environmental information to stakeholders, or for internal knowledge and product development, LCAs are becoming a key activity for businesses globally.”
Step 1: Define your goals and scope
This is where we can support in setting boundaries for your LCA.
The goal explains why you’re doing it, and the scope defines what’s included. That might be the full lifecycle from cradle to grave, just the production stages from cradle to gate, or a circular model from cradle to cradle.
The scope also determines the methodology you’ll use. Common standards include ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, ISO 14067 for carbon footprinting specifically, the GHG Protocol Product Standard, EN15804 for construction products, and the EU’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology.
Choosing the right standard depends on your sector, your goals, and how you plan to use the results. This is one of the areas where working with an expert makes a real difference.
Step 2: Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (Data Collection)
Once the scope is defined, it’s time to gather the facts. This stage involves collecting data across every relevant part of your product’s journey, tracking things like:
- Raw materials used
- Energy consumed
- Emissions produced
- Waste generated
Data can come from your own operations, your suppliers, or published industry datasets. The quality of this data directly affects the reliability of your results, so getting it right from the start matters. Our experienced consultants are on hand to support you along the way.
Step 3: Life Cycle Impact Assessment
Here, you (our experts) translate the data into real-world environmental impact categories. It’s the point where you figure out how significant the environmental impact actually is, looking at things like:
- Global warming potential
- Air pollution
- Water pollution
- Resource depletion
Emission hotspots often become visible at this stage, revealing that the biggest impacts can sit in unexpected places, like a particular manufacturing process or a long-distance transport leg. Applying the right methodologies here requires specialist knowledge, and getting it right is essential for results you can trust and act on.
Step 4: Interpretation
The final step is making sense of what you’ve found and deciding what to do next.
Interpretation means looking at the results in the context of your original goal. What’s the worst impact? Where can you improve? Should you switch to lower-impact materials or change production methods?
This is where the real value of an LCA starts to show, and insights from this stage can feed into product development, supplier conversations, regulatory submissions, marketing claims, and long-term sustainability strategy.
Critical review
If you’re planning to publish your LCA results or use them in marketing, reporting, or regulatory submissions, a critical review may be required. This is an independent check that your study meets the relevant standards and that your findings are transparent and reliable.
It’s not always necessary, but for many businesses it’s an important step. Our LCA experts at Positive Planet can guide you through the critical review process from start to finish, and also conduct critical reviews on studies already conducted.
How long does an LCA take?
It depends on the complexity of the product and the level of detail required. A basic LCA could take a few weeks, while more complex assessments with detailed data collection and analysis may take several months. The timeline also depends on the availability of data and the resources allocated to the project.
How Positive Planet can help
Conducting an LCA takes time, technical knowledge, and the right tools. Our team works to a wide range of standards from various frameworks, and can guide you through every stage, from scoping and data collection to impact assessment, interpretation, and critical review.
Everyone we work with is also paired with a dedicated Sustainability Consultant and Project Manager from the very start, so you get both the technical depth and the hands-on support to keep things moving.
Whether you’re conducting your first LCA or building on existing work, we’re here to make the process straightforward and the results meaningful for your business.
Start your LCA journey with our team today.