A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology to analyze the environmental aspects of a product over its life cycle. In order to do so properly, the boundaries of the life cycle need to be set. There are different methods of setting the boundaries which all lead to a different breadth and depth of the analysis. The extent to which an LCA is performed should be defined based on the goals of the organization conducting the LCA. The goals and scope are a distinct section of an LCA and play an important role for the boundary setting of the analyses performed. It’s also important to keep in mind that these boundaries can be applied for a full LCA but also for specific portions, such as the carbon aspect.
The most common LCA approaches are listed below:
Cradle-to-grave | This approach is commonly used when performing a full LCA. It looks at all environmental aspects from the resource extraction (cradle) over the use phase, and finally to the disposal of the product (grave). |
Cradle-to-gate | This approach typically refers to a partial LCA as it does not consider the whole life cycle of a product, but only looks at the environmental impacts occurring from the resource extraction (cradle) to the production and manufacturing of the product (gate). It stops when the product reaches the factory gate, before it is transported to the customer. It is mostly used for products that have most of their emission impact occurring during the production phase and little to no impact during the use and maintenance phase (e.g. keys, doors, books, etc). The cradle-to-gate method is often used as the basis for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). |
Cradle-to-cradle | The cradle-to-cradle approach is the most holistic assessment method. It follows the same steps as the cradle-to-grave approach but replaces the last step, the disposal, with a recycling process closing the loop. |
Gate-to-gate | This approach looks only at environmental aspects of the production/ manufacturing process, disregarding resource extraction as well as the impacts once the finished product leaves the factory. |