Improve your environmental footprint and optimise the use of your resources
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) identifies the environmental impact of a product, process or service throughout the different stages of its life cycle, from the beginning until the end. Essentially, the LCA takes into account all types of environmental impacts, from the extraction of the raw materials required for manufacture to its final disposal as waste. This includes all resource consumption (water, soil, mineral resources, fuels, etc.) and potentially hazardous emissions (such as carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, phosphates, heavy metals, pesticides, etc.).
The LCA methodology can be partially applied to the quantification and assessment of specific environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions (Carbon Footprint) or water use (Water Footprint). This tool facilitates the task of quantifying and assessing the overall environmental impacts associated with products and activities. As a result, the most problematic stages can be identified from an environmental point of view, providing very useful information for decision-making and for defining environmental improvement plans.
The same methodology can be applied to other aspects such as cost (Life Cycle Cost Analysis) and social aspects (Social LCA).
