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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 now not helpful— every stage impacts the atmosphere. Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, assist us estimate that influence and determine areas for enchancment all through a product’s life cycle.
LCAs assist companies perceive the environmental footprint of their merchandise, processes, or companies throughout each stage of their life cycle. From vitality use to water consumption, LCAs reveal crucial knowledge that may drive extra sustainable selections.
What’s a Life Cycle Evaluation (LCA)?
A Life Cycle Evaluation evaluates the whole life cycle of a product, together with*:
- Uncooked materials extraction. One instance is sourcing minerals, metals, or pure fibers.
- Supplies and product manufacturing — resembling changing supplies into completed merchandise.
- Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
- Utilization — resembling 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 influence 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 influence.
* Observe, 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 resembling 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 could 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 1000’s of liters of water, with further water used for dyeing, washing, and cleansing the shirt over its lifetime.
Major Vitality Demand (Vitality consumption): LCAs consider the vitality sources used to supply, distribute, and energy a product. For a T-shirt, this contains 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 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 influence.
They will supply tangible advantages for companies aiming to fulfill their sustainability targets. By figuring out essentially the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, corporations can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement adjustments resembling utilizing renewable vitality to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that scale back their total influence. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which are extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with decreased resource-intensiveness and environmental influence.
For instance, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are decided throughout the design section.1 LCAs may help examine alternate options and perceive trade-offs when choosing 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 assist environmental reporting. Sharing these studies builds belief with clients, staff, buyers, and different stakeholders, whereas making certain 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 section of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and decoding the outcomes to assist initiatives like net-zero targets and round product design.
LCAs observe globally accepted requirements, such because the Worldwide Group for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 and 14044. There are different requirements which are 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 reduce the environmental influence of our merchandise.
Not too long ago, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly accessible, sharing LCAs for quite a lot of our merchandise on the Sustainability Sources part of our web site. Cisco has already accomplished 23 LCAs throughout 8 enterprise models prior 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.
Whereas many know-how corporations publish LCAs, Cisco is likely one of the first to supply them for networking gear, resembling Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace and Provide Chain Sustainability groups proceed to companion with our colleagues throughout the corporate to supply these studies, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they develop into accessible.
LCAs are a part of how we method sustainability holistically. LCA knowledge helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and sources which are reused, repurposed, and saved in circulation for so long as attainable. By evaluating every part from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we achieve crucial insights that information our product design and innovation.
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