Life Cycle Thinking

Life Cycle Thinking is a different approach to becoming mindful of how everyday life has an impact on the environment. This approach evaluates how both consuming products and engaging in activities impacts the environment but it not only evaluates them at one single step, but takes a holistic picture of an entire product or activity system. This means when talking about a product and taking a Life Cycle Thinking approach, what is actually being evaluated is the impact of the activity of consuming that product. This is because by consuming a product, a series of associated activities are required to make it happen. For example, the raw material extraction, material processing, transportation, distribution, consumption, reuse/recycling, and disposal must all be considered when evaluating the environmental impact. This is called the life cycle of a product. The overall idea of making a holistic evaluation of a systems impact can be defined as Life Cycle Thinking.

Life Cycle Thinking therefore also can be applied to the consumption of other socio-economic activities such as watching a movie, making arts and crafts, cooking dinner, or even doing homework. For example, renting a movie, which seems to be a harmless activity, would involve burning gasoline to drive to the video store, using electricity to power the television and DVD player, and consuming power from the remote’s batteries. However when trying to analyze quantitatively the impacts of life cycles, limits to evaluation are subject to what assessment approach is taken because the chain reaction can become so complex that it could require decades to figure out the life cycle of a specific process. Life Cycle Thinking overall is a way to become more mindful of the complexities of consuming products and engaging in activities and how they affect the environment.

Goals

The goal of Life Cycle Thinking is to make people and companies more aware of how their actions impact the environment in a holistic sense rather than a one time pollution that comes as a direct result of using a product or doing an activity at one specific time. Although it is nearly impossible to undergo consumption of anything with no environmental impact, Life Cycle Thinking can help people make better alternative decisions to mitigate their environmental impact. One of Life Cycle Thinking's biggest goals is to avoid burden shifting.^[1] This is to make sure that reducing the environmental impact at one stage in the life cycle does not increase the impact at other places in the cycle. For example, plug in electric cars reduce the amount of gasoline burned but they increase the amount of electricity used which is usually generated by other polluting energy sources such as coal. Life Cycle Thinking can also demonstrate the benefits to technological innovation. For example, movies can now be downloaded through television service providers and gaming devices which eliminates the need to drive to a DVD rental location. By identifying pollution costs, companies can innovate to mitigate their expenses while consumers can make better alternative choices to mitigate their impact.

• Avoid burden shifting
• Reveal the complexity of the system triggered by an action which can have several negative environmental effects.
• Connect people more directly with the impacts of their life style and demonstrate how each action has a reaction which is sometimes asymmetrically worse for the environment.
• Make companies more mindful of environmental impacts of their operations.

Help identify cost cutting possibilities

Help identify less harmful operation strategies

• Provide people with a framework to make choices that over a life cycle have less environmental impacts.
• Create a culture focused on sustainability rather than short term gratification.

Sectors

Life-cycle thinking has applications in many sectors, such as the following:^[2]

Agriculture

The agriculture/food sector is a big source environmental impacts that occur throughout the lifetime of a product, from farm to table to disposal. Life-cycle thinking works to reduce these impacts at all stages of food production. Nutrition, health, well being, cultural identity and lifestyle are also factors that should be addressed when looking at the impacts of choices made in food production to ensure decreases in emissions and environmental impact do not occur at the expense of consumer wellbeing.

Manufacturing

A product Life Cycle Analysis involves all production and service processes involved in the manufacturing of a product throughout its life-cycle. This includes the production of materials needed to make the product. Since the manufacturing sector is a big emitter of pollutants and user of natural resources, pinpointing areas in which to decrease environmental impact throughout the manufacturing process is a big part of life-cycle thinking.

Energy

Drastic increases in atmospheric CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels, has led to the search for alternative energy sources like biofuels and renewable energy sources. To analyze whether or not these alternative sources have overall less environmental impact then conventional energy sources, life-cycle analysis is needed. Life-cycle thinking is an intricate part of finding new energy sources that have an overall smaller impact on the environment.

Waste management

Life-cycle thinking and analysis can help reduce negative environmental impacts of waste generation and management. This includes looking at ways to reduce waste production, increase recycling, and dispose of waste in a more environmentally friendly way. This is complicated by differences in benefits and burdens of in different geographical regions and the fact that effects usually occur over long periods of time. Furthermore benefits and burdens of different processes can occur in many different forms and can be difficult to identify, quantify and compare.

Retail

Retail often accounts for a significant portion of economies and thus can have huge implications in terms of environmental impacts. The life cycle of a product in retail would include the complete supply-chain of the product, its use and disposal or end-of-life treatment.

Construction

There are many uses for life-cycle thinking in construction, especially in terms of construction waste and waste management. Finding better ways to recycle waste and prevent waste are important to reduce negative environmental impact of the construction industry.

Transport

Finding alternative fuel sources are the biggest challenges to reducing negative environmental impact in the transportation sector. Biofuels are becoming increasing popular as an alternative to fossil fuels. Life cycle analysis can provide a fuller picture of the extent alternative fuel sources reduce emissions and overall environmental impact compared to conventional fuels.

Services

Service industries play a big part in adding environmental burdens, especially in terms of greenhouse gas emissions generated by travel and tourist industries. The service industry is expected to play a larger part in the modern economy as “dematerialization,” or the replacement of manufactured goods by services in many firms, plays a bigger role in the economy.

Approaches

There are many different approaches to life cycle thinking that all involve looking at life cycle-generated impacts and ways to minimize these impacts. An important component to life cycle approaches is avoiding burden shifting, in other words, ensuring that improvements in one stage are not achieved at the expense of another stage. Approaches of impact measurement focus on decreasing environmental impact and resource use throughout all stages of a process.^[3]

Commonly used approaches:

Life-cycle assessment

Life-cycle assessment (LCA or life cycle analysis) is a technique used to access environmental impacts of a product at different stages of its life. This technique takes a “cradle-to-grave” approach and looks at environmental impacts that occur throughout the lifetime of a product from raw material extraction, manufacturing and processing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, disposal and recycling.

Life Cycle Management (LCM)

Life cycle management is a business approach to manage the total life cycle of products and services. It follows the life cycle thinking that businesses, through the activities they must perform, have environmental, social and economic impacts. LCM is used to understand and analyze life cycle stages of products and services of a business, identify potential economic, social or environmental risks and opportunities at each stage and create ways to act upon those opportunities and reduce potential risks.^[4]

Life Cycle Costing (LCC)

Life cycle costing (or life cycle cost analysis) is the total cost analysis of a process or system. This includes costs incurred over the life of the system and is frequently used to find most cost-effective means for providing goods and services.^[5]

Design for the Environment

Design for the Environment Program (DfE) was created in 1992 by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and works to prevent pollution and the reduce the risks pollution presents to humans and the environment. The main goals of the DfE are to promote green cleaning, recognize safer industrial and consumer products through safer product labeling, define best practices in production and manufacturing, and identify safer chemicals for these processes based on life cycle thinking. Having said this they must know that the air pollution in USA has the mixing of liquid, solid, gaseous, odour and noise pollution which is dangerous for human being, animals and plants.^[6]

Product Service System

Product Service Systems (PSS) are sets of marketable products and services that work together to fulfill a user’s needs. This new approach is a result of firms realizing that services in combination with products can provide higher profits and customer satisfaction then simply selling products alone. Firms that use PSS work to find ways to maximize the use of their product throughout its lifetime, using services to supplement its usage. PSS has been seen to have smaller environmental impact than traditional business models, as the focus on services has led to a decrease in material production and consumption. This applies to life cycle thinking because it involves looking at the life-cycle cost of a product (i.e. maintenance and storage costs) for a consumer and reducing that cost by providing services with the purchased good.

Integrated Product Policy (IPP)

Integrated product policy works to minimize environmental degradation caused by products by looking at all phases of a product’s life-cycle to pinpoint where taking action is most effective. This also uses a cradle-to-grave approach when looking at a product’s life. In addition, it is important that policies avoid burden shifting and do not decrease environment emissions at one stage of development at the expense of another. Policy measures used to action upon recommendations include economic instruments, substance bans, voluntary agreements, environmental labeling and product design guidelines.^[7]

Applications

There are multiple situations to which Life Cycle Thinking can be applied including every day life of consumers, business and government policy. By applying life cycle thinking to multiple aspects of the community, consumers, businesses and governments can have a largely positive aspect on the environment. This is true even if the steps taken to apply life cycle thinking are small.

Consumers

Each day consumers make choices as to which products they would like to use based on their needs and the different brands available. However, most consumers do not take into consideration the environmental impacts of the product when they make their choice. For example, consumers do not consider the product's energy usage, illegal labor conditions that produced it, hazardous waste from production, impacts on the ecosystem, or pollution of air or water.

Consumers can apply life cycle thinking in multiple different ways with regards to their product choices in order to reduce their impact on the environment. Firstly, consumers can chose to use products from companies who take strides towards sustainability. Many companies provide sustainability reports that consumers can read to educate themselves about the companies they buy from. By using life cycle thinking, consumers can chose a company with smaller production impacts.

Primarily, consumer usage has the largest impact on the environment throughout a products life. By using life cycle thinking this impact can be reduced. This would require educating consumers to make better choices about product usage. This can come from the companies who provide the service or product or from government agencies. For example, consumers can ask themselves what impacts they have while using the product. Ask do I really need to use this or is there a more sustainable option, such as hang drying laundry on a nice day rather than using a dryer. Consumers can educate themselves on how to become more sustainable themselves through life cycle thinking rather than relying on companies and the government to be sustainable for them.

Businesses

Businesses are responsible for many choices about their services and products each day. By applying life cycle thinking, businesses can recognize the potential impacts of their choices. They consider how each design and manufacturing decision has an effect on the environment and how they can make it more sustainable. Businesses not only take into consideration how the product is made, but also how the product will be used and disposed of by the user. Companies try to have a more sustainable product by making products recyclable or reusable. They challenging part is balancing cost and sustainable choices. Life cycle thinking allows them to see the best sustainable options but is limited when it comes to pricing these choices. Life cycle thinking for businesses entails consideration of where to obtain raw material, how to manufacture the material, transporting, distributing, using, and disposing of the product. By looking at all of these phases businesses make the best choices for themselves and the consumer for a lower impact on the environment.

Governments

Government plays a key role in life cycle thinking by establishing policies to regulate environmental impacts. By applying life cycle thinking policy makers can set standards that businesses and consumers need to meet. They do so by gathering information as a baseline of the environmental impact and use that to set goals based on knowledge from life cycle thinking. They can also use trends from supply chains of different businesses they regulate to determine where the biggest influence can be made to majorly reduce the impacts of the businesses. Government sectors can also use life cycle thinking to better educate consumers. Requiring labels on products describing the impacts the product has and how to use the products in order to reduce the impact can be an important role for the government. Regulating supply chains and consumers with policy is motivational as negative reinforcement. Life cycle thinking provides a methodology for creating those policies in order to have the most effective and most cost efficient means of reducing environmental impacts.

Life Cycle Thinking in Policy

Many consumers, when making decisions on what to buy and what not to buy, consider the environmental impact of the particular product. Policy makers recognize this desire, and act to create policy that not only helps consumers do this, but will do so while keeping a growing economy in mind.

European Policy

There are many aspects of Life Cycle Thinking incorporated into European policy. The Sustainable Consumption and Production Action Plan is a piece of legislation that aims to reduce environmental impact and consumption of resources associated with the complete life cycles of goods and services.^[8] On July 16, 2008 the European Commission presented this legislation. This proposal suggests plans on how to not only reduce the environmental impacts of goods and services, but also encourages the use of more sustainable goods and production technologies. This action plan also encourages the European Union to seek out every opportunity to innovate in industry.^[9]

The Integrated Product Policy is another legislative action that Europe has taken in order to facilitate life cycle thinking. The Integrated Product Policy seeks to minimize the environmental degradation caused from the manufacturing, use and disposal of all products. This legislation looks at all aspects of the product’s life cycle and takes action where necessary to reduce.^[10]

The Thematic Strategy on Sustainable Use of Natural Resources was implemented on the 21st of December in 2005 to reduce environmental impacts associated with resource use and to do this in a growing economy. The objective can be described as “ensuring that the consumption of resources and their associated impacts do not exceed the carrying capacity of the environment and breaking linkages between economic growth and resource use”.^[11]

United States Policy

While the term "life cycle thinking" is not as prominent in United States policy, there are considerations of the life cycle process throughout governmental policies and programs. There are Environmental Product Declarations that are used to incorporate life cycle thinking into companies and organizations. They communicate to the consumer the environmental performance of a product or system. These declarations are based on the Life Cycle Assessment and once the assessment is complete a product or system can be certified EPD.^[12]

The Environmental Protection Agency's program, Design for the Environment works with individual industry sectors to compare and improve the performance and human health and environmental risks and costs of existing and alternative products, processes, and practices. DfE partnership projects promote integrating cleaner, cheaper, and smarter solutions into everyday business practices.^[13] The Design for the Environment program is also equipped with a labeling program. They allow safer products to carry these labels and they are an indication to consumers that buying these products will be safer for the environment and their families.^[14]

Also, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is a piece of legislation that incorporates life cycle thinking. While this exact phrase isn't listed. This act includes sections on advanced biofuels. In Title II of the act, it requires the creation of Biomass-based diesel which is the addition of renewable biofuels to diesel fuel and will reduce emissions by 50% as compared to petroleum biofuel. In Title III improved standards will be implemented.

Importance of Life Cycle Thinking

Since Life Cycle Thinking can be involved in the choices of individual consumers, as well as policy makers and businesses, it is very important that people are well informed about the subject and its uses.^[1] Increasing awareness of the Life Cycle Analysis technique would allow companies as well as individuals to consider multiple options for a new product. After consideration of all available options, Life Cycle Thinking would encourage selection of the most sustainable option. If more individuals practiced Life Cycle Thinking when looking for new materials or methods, they would be more aware of how the environmental cost of ownership of products can be influenced by the running costs in energy and consumables.^[15]

Life Cycle Thinking can help people find new ways to improve environmental performance, image, and economic benefits.^[1] Since the decisions of global businesses and government organizations have such a large impact on the environment, incorporating Life Cycle Thinking into their actions could greatly reduce negative environmental effects and improve sustainability. Many businesses do not always consider their supply chains or the “end-of-life” processes associated with their products; likewise, government actions frequently consider their own country or region and do not take into account the impact that they could have on other regions.^[1]

Not only could Life Cycle Thinking help the environment, it can also save the company more money and improve their reputation. If a company knows where their materials come from as well as where they will end up after they have reached the end of their useful life, economic performance could be further enhanced. Also, since presently so much emphasis is placed on sustainable actions, the more a company shows its concern and respect for the environment, the better its reputation will be.

In a case study on laundry detergents, it was found that washing clothes at lower temperatures resulted in energy savings and improvements in several environmental indicators, like climate change, acidification and photochemical ozone creation. Because the company understood the importance of Life Cycle Thinking, they made the decision to conduct a Life Cycle Analysis to find the benefits of developing a different laundry detergent. Not only did the new detergents reduce environmental impact by decreasing energy consumption, it also benefitted the consumer by reducing electricity bills and helped the company by becoming a leader in the industry. (3)^[16]

References and further reading

• http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pdf-directory/Making%20sustainable%20consumption%20and%20production%20a%20reality-A%20guide%20for%20business%20and%20policy%20makers%20to%20Life%20Cycle%20Thinking%20and%20Assessment.pdf
• http://www.setac.org/node/90