Skills for work and life

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool that measures the environmental footprint of a product or service over its life cycle. LCA provides information to help businesses understand, manage and communicate their environmental impacts.

LCA calculates a snapshot of a product’s environmental impacts, including:

• What goes into the product to make it (e.g. energy and raw materials)
• What comes out when the product is used and disposed of (e.g. waste, water pollution, carbon).

The lower the ‘impact’, the smaller the product’s environmental footprint.