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Life cycle assessment (LCA)
A life cycle assessment (LCA) looks at a product's environmental impact across its whole life cycle: raw material extraction, production, transport, use and disposal. It is used to compare materials or designs against each other, considering things like energy use, CO2 emissions and recyclability.
the phases of a life cycle assessment
Example
A product can have low CO2 emissions in production but high emissions in the use phase if it consumes a lot of electricity — LCA captures both.
An assessment that only looks at the production phase can give a wrong conclusion about the total environmental footprint.
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