What is a Life Cycle Assessment?
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a way to measure the full environmental impact of something — from beginning to end. It looks at everything from raw materials to production, use, and even disposal.
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You can think of it like a detailed environmental “story” of your product or process — told with data.
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An LCA helps you answer questions like:
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How much carbon is released across the full supply chain?
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Where is most of the energy or water used?
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What can we change to reduce impact or improve sustainability?
AuthentiCycle builds LCAs that meet international standards but explains them in simple, understandable ways. You don’t need to be an expert — that’s our job.
What is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?
A Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA for short, is a way to measure the environmental impact of a product or service from start to finish. Think of it as a big, detailed story about everything that happens to something — from when it’s made, to when you use it, all the way to when it’s thrown away or recycled.
Imagine you want to know how much this story affects the planet. For example, if you’re buying a pair of shoes, the LCA looks at all the steps involved: growing or gathering the raw materials, making the shoes in a factory, shipping them to stores, you using them, and finally what happens when you don’t want them anymore. The idea is to understand the impact at every stage so we can find ways to make products that are better for the environment.
Why Does LCA Matter?
We often think about just one part of a product’s life — like how it’s made or how much energy it uses — but the full picture can be much bigger. Sometimes, something might seem good for the environment at one stage but cause problems at another. For example, a product might be made with recycled materials (which is great!) but could use a lot of energy to transport. An LCA helps spot these kinds of trade-offs.
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By knowing the whole story, companies and people can make smarter choices, like picking materials that last longer, using less energy, or recycling more effectively. It’s a tool to help reduce pollution, save resources, and protect nature.
What Does and LCA Look Like?
An LCA collects lots of information—called “data”—about a product’s journey. This includes things like how much water or energy is used, how much waste is created, or how much carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) is released. All of this information gets added up to create a clear picture of the product’s environmental footprint.
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Even though it sounds complicated, the goal is simple: to understand how human activities affect the environment so we can do better.
Different Types of LCAs: Cradle-to-Grave, Cradle-to-Gate, and Gate-to-Gate
Not all LCAs have to cover the entire life of a product from start to finish, which is sometimes called “cradle-to-grave.” Some LCAs focus just on part of the journey, and that’s perfectly okay.
product’s life.
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Cradle-to-gate looks at everything from the beginning (like gathering raw materials) up to the point where the product leaves the factory gate. This type is useful if you want to understand or improve the environmental impact of just your part of the process.
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Gate-to-gate focuses on a specific step in the process—basically what happens inside one facility or one stage of production.
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Many of our clients want to do LCAs for their own part of the supply chain because they don’t always have access to data from other parts. That’s normal and expected. The good news is these partial LCAs can be combined or aligned with others later, so that together they add up to a full picture of the product’s life.
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How Can You Use and LCA?
If you’re a business, an LCA helps you improve your products, reduce costs, and meet customer or legal requirements. If you’re a consumer, companies can share LCA results to help you make more informed choices about what you buy.
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It’s also used by policymakers to create rules that encourage companies to reduce pollution and waste.
In Short
A Life Cycle Assessment is like a full environmental check-up for a product or service. It looks at everything from start to finish to understand how it affects the planet. By seeing the whole story, or even just your part of it, we can make smarter, healthier choices for our world.
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Want to know more or talk it through?