Advance Sustainability Goals With Lifecycle Assessment, the Net-Zero Hero

With growing environmental concerns and sustainability requirements, progress towards net-zero is underway – but more can be done, faster. To accelerate sustainable innovation, companies can start by implementing eco-design principles.

A product or service’s design determines 80% of its environmental impact throughout the lifecycle. When companies integrate eco-design into their product and service development, they can weave sustainability into the entire value network and drive a circular economy. Despite 56% of executives knowing this, many struggle to take action, as revealed by a Financial Times (FT) Focus report. Here’s how integrated lifecycle assessment capabilities can help.

Lifecycle assessment (LCA) quantifies the environmental impact of end-to-end business products and services, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished goods. Relying on data about a company’s processes and from thousands of sources, LCA aims to answer questions such as:

• Which product designs and material selections are the most sustainable ones?  
• Which processes have the lowest consumption of land and water resources?
• Which manufacturing and supplier strategy has the best carbon footprint?

Conventional LCA measures the impact of what has already been done and stands apart from day-to-day business activities. But with advanced digitalization, LCA can do so much more.