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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 not helpful— every stage impacts the atmosphere. Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, assist us estimate that affect and determine areas for enchancment all through a product’s life cycle.

LCAs assist companies perceive the environmental footprint of their merchandise, processes, or providers 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*:

1. Uncooked materials extraction. One instance is sourcing minerals, metals, or pure fibers.
2. Supplies and product manufacturing — equivalent to changing supplies into completed merchandise.
3. Transportation and distribution — together with the journey to shops, warehouses, and clients.
4. Utilization — equivalent to sources consumed when a product is in use.
5. Finish-of-life — what occurs to a product after use: as an illustration, recycling, reuse, or landfill disposal.

LCAs estimate the environmental affect 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 scale back their environmental affect.

* Be aware, 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 equivalent to 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 may be measured:

International 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 hundreds of liters of water, with further water used for dyeing, washing, and cleansing the shirt over its lifetime.

Main 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 may 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 generally is a highly effective device for driving innovation and decreasing environmental affect.

They’ll supply tangible advantages for companies aiming to fulfill their sustainability objectives. By figuring out essentially the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, corporations can goal environmental “hotspots” and implement modifications equivalent to utilizing renewable vitality to energy manufacturing websites or switching to extra sustainable supplies that cut back their general affect. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of merchandise which can be extra energy-efficient, sturdy, and round with decreased resource-intensiveness and environmental affect.

For instance, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are decided throughout the design section.¹ LCAs may also help examine options and perceive trade-offs when choosing elements, course of steps or disposal varieties. By integrating LCAs early within the design course of, corporations can enhance sustainability outcomes.

Publishing LCA outcomes helps to reinforce company transparency and help environmental reporting. Sharing these reviews builds belief with clients, staff, buyers, and different stakeholders, whereas guaranteeing compliance with international sustainability requirements and reporting frameworks.

How are LCAs carried out?

Conducting an LCA is a structured course of that entails gathering knowledge throughout each section of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and deciphering the outcomes to help initiatives like net-zero objectives 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 can be additionally based mostly on ISO’s framework.

Cisco’s method to Life Cycle Assessments

At Cisco, LCAs play a key position in our efforts to estimate and decrease the environmental affect of our merchandise.

Just lately, we introduced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly out there, 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 items prior to now two years and plans to publish further assessments throughout key product strains in 2025. Sharing these outcomes helps transparency and demonstrates our dedication to measurable progress.

Whereas many know-how corporations publish LCAs, Cisco is among the first to supply them for networking gear, equivalent to Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace and Provide Chain Sustainability groups proceed to accomplice with our colleagues throughout the corporate to supply these reviews, and we plan to proceed publishing them as they turn out to be out there.

LCAs are a part of how we method sustainability holistically. LCA knowledge helps our round design technique— to develop merchandise and sources which can be reused, repurposed, and saved in circulation for so long as attainable. By evaluating all the things from materials sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we acquire crucial insights that information our product design and innovation.

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