Today’s consumers have unlimited options when purchasing environmentally friendly or sustainable products, and cannot always trust that the claims advertised are true and accurate. It is up to manufacturers, brands and retailers to substantiate these claims in order to provide consumers with promises they can really trust. In turn, manufacturers, brands and retailers seek to promote their environmental credentials and efforts related to designing, sourcing and manufacturing eco-friendly products as market differentiators in the competitive consumer goods marketplace.

LCA is a tool applied to quantifying environmental impacts of product. It helps to discover the factors and parameters which lead to the worst environmental impacts so as to generate solutions to improve. It enables the comparison of environmental performance of products and could be used to facilitate the green design. Companies could select the right materials through comparison of the environmental impacts to improve the environmental performance of its final products, e.g. some material could be recycled after use, while the other generates less wastes during the manufacturing. Through the comparison to the results of LCA, the material whose environmental performance (in the concerned aspects) is better than others could be selected.

Life Cycle Assessment is a method to evaluate environmental impact of a product (or a service) system throughout its life cycle stages, usually including raw materials extraction, components manufacturing, product assembling, use and end of life. It is based on the life cycle inventory (abbreviated to LCI) of the product, i.e. the data assembly of the input (resource and energy) and output (emission and wastes) of the product at each stage of its life cycle.

As the world-renowned third-party service provider, Intertek, has recognized the importance of LCA to the industry and devoted to promote the application of the method. We have developed various applications suitable for professionals as well as non-professionals, applications such as simplified LCA, middle LCA and full range LCA. Advisory services and trainings could be delivered upon request.

Environmental impacts & Life Cycle Analysis