LCA as part of strategy development

By Ellen Riise

A life cycle assessment for a company’s product will give important input on where the major environmental impacts occur. These major impacts can be either in the supply chain, in the processes owned by the company, or in the use or end-of-life of the product.  With this knowledge the company can formulate its environmental strategy, with the aim to efficiently work to improve these parts of the product’s life cycle.

By defining the outline of the the strategic directions (where do we want to go, what do we want to achieve), as well as critical success factors (what has to be done) and key performance indicators (what needs to be measured) the company has the possibility to follow up actions and steer the future work.

The strategy can focus on improving the environmental performance of the supply chain, supporting and guiding the product development or striving to optimize the company’s own production.

A continuous and systematic work with LCA will support decisions needed to follow the strategy and enable the company to succeed in fulfilling the goals.

See further information regarding strategy & organisation in the “Supply chain activities” part on this website.