Life Cycle Assessment Guide

A life cycle assessment quantifies the environmental impact of a product, process or service across its full life cycle, from raw material extraction through manufacture, distribution, use and end of life. The purpose is to find where impact concentrates, compare options on a like for like basis, and support reduction, eco-design and credible environmental claims.

GreenSutra delivers life cycle assessment services across India to the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 framework, tailored to each product and sector. The engagement runs from goal and scope through inventory, impact assessment and interpretation, and extends to product carbon footprints and Environmental Product Declarations where a verified result is required.

A life cycle assessment turns environmental performance into measured evidence. It surfaces the hotspots that drive cost and impact, informs eco-design and material choices, prepares a business for procurement and disclosure requirements, and supports claims that customers, investors and regulators can verify.

An LCA consultant defines the goal, scope, functional unit and system boundary, compiles the life cycle inventory of inputs and outputs, runs the impact assessment across the relevant categories, and interprets the results into conclusions and recommendations, following the requirements of ISO 14044.

Manufacturing, construction and building materials, packaging and fast moving consumer goods, automotive, energy and electronics use life cycle assessment to quantify impact, publish Environmental Product Declarations, answer buyer questionnaires, and meet procurement and regulatory expectations.

ISO 14040 sets the principles and framework for life cycle assessment, and ISO 14044 sets the detailed requirements and guidelines for conducting one. Both were published in 2006 and adopted in India as IS/ISO 14040 and IS/ISO 14044. A defensible study cites both.

A functional unit is the quantified description of the function a product delivers, defined during goal and scope. Every input, output and impact is referenced to it, so that two products or designs can be compared on an equal basis rather than by mass or volume alone.

A carbon footprint measures greenhouse gas emissions in a single impact category, global warming potential. A full life cycle assessment evaluates several categories at once, such as acidification, eutrophication, water use and resource depletion, across the whole life cycle. A product carbon footprint to ISO 14067 sits inside that wider assessment.

An Environmental Product Declaration is a third party verified Type III declaration under ISO 14025 that reports a product's life cycle environmental performance against Product Category Rules. The underlying study follows ISO 14040 and 14044, and an EPD is widely used in construction and procurement.

A life cycle assessment draws on the bill of materials, energy and water use, process and transport data, and end of life handling for the product. Duration depends on the system boundary and on how much primary data is available, both fixed during goal and scope definition.

A product carbon footprint applies the life cycle framework of ISO 14040 and 14044 to quantify and report only the greenhouse gas emissions of a product across its life cycle. It is the carbon view of a life cycle assessment, and often the first deliverable a buyer or tender requests.

Life cycle assessment work is commonly built in dedicated software such as SimaPro, GaBi (now LCA for Experts) and the open source OpenLCA, drawing on recognised background life cycle inventory databases, of which the ecoinvent database is the most widely used. The software models the product system and applies impact assessment methods, while the database supplies background data for materials, energy and processes that primary plant data does not cover. The choice of tool and dataset is recorded in goal and scope so the study stays transparent and repeatable.

EN 15804 is the European standard that sets the core Product Category Rules for Type III Environmental Product Declarations of construction products, defining how life cycle data is calculated, reported, verified and presented so that EPDs from different programme operators are comparable. It complements ISO 14025, which governs how EPD programmes operate. The current version is EN 15804:2012+A2:2019, and the +A2 version has been the basis required for new construction product EPDs since October 2022. It applies where a construction product EPD is being prepared, rather than to every life cycle assessment.

The cost of a life cycle assessment depends on the scope rather than a single rate. The main drivers are the system boundary chosen, cradle to gate or the wider cradle to grave, the number of products and impact categories assessed, the availability of primary data against reliance on background datasets, and whether a verified output such as an Environmental Product Declaration or a product carbon footprint is needed. A focused study on one product with good primary data sits at one end, and a multi product, third party verified programme at the other. Goal and scope definition fixes these variables, which is why a tailored proposal follows a short briefing rather than a fixed price.

There is no single universal rule that a life cycle assessment or Environmental Product Declaration must accompany every product entering the EU. The requirement is sector and regulation specific. For construction products, the revised Construction Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/3110, phases in a legal duty to declare life cycle environmental performance calculated in accordance with EN 15804. Other regimes such as the Digital Product Passport under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation add life cycle data duties for further product groups over time, and importers of goods covered by the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism report embedded emissions under a dedicated EU method rather than through an EPD. Outside such specific regimes an LCA or EPD is generally voluntary, although buyers increasingly expect one.

No. A life cycle assessment has four phases under ISO 14040: goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation. Reporting is a requirement set out in ISO 14044, together with a critical review where a public comparative assertion is made, rather than an official fifth phase. The four phases are iterative, so interpretation can return the study to refine the goal, the inventory or the system boundary.