Life Cycle Assessment
Measure and communicate the impact of your products or services
RINA provides high level consultancy services in the field of Life Cycle Sustainability, providing our clients with instruments to measure and communicate the impacts of their products or services in a clear and transparent way, considering the entire life cycle.
Our structured approach to identify hotspots can support clients in decision making process and drive future intervention and activities, while the possibility to measure the commitment to sustainability improves client’s brand reputation.
Our Service
Life cycle assessment (LCA) represents a structured approach, defined by the ISO 14040-44, to evaluate the environmental impacts of products and services through 4 different phases: goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation of the results. The assessment is performed with the aid of professional software and databases and provide results for different types of indicators, such as climate change, eutrophication or acidification potential.
The whole life cycle of the analyzed product system can be considered in the assessment, from the extraction of raw materials to the end-of-life, providing strong and reliable results, covering all life cycle stages and the whole value chain.
This enables to identify possible hotspots and provide recommendations to the clients for the further development of their products (eco-design) or to improve their services, supporting in this way the clients in efficiently accomplishing their goals and protecting the environment.
Main benefits
- Gain a better understanding of the impacts of your product/service
- Identify possible environmental hotspots and solutions to overcome them
- Communicate to stakeholders the commitment to sustainability in a clear and transparent way
- Meet the growing demand of sustainable products and services and improve your competitiveness on the market
Moreover, the results of LCA can be used to develop an environmental label or claim: EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) for example represents a credible instrument through which communicate reliable and verifiable environmental performances of product/service. Carbonfree® Product Certification is another example of certification that companies can obtain after performing an LCA study: once the product is registered as Carbonfree®, it will be also automatically registered in Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly Program.
Comparative LCA is also utilized in building certification schemes, such as LEEDv4, Option 4, where demonstrating a decrease of environmental impact in the new/upgraded building allows to obtain credits for LEED certification, as well as the use of components with EPD certification.
Moreover, the same approach applied to quantify the environmental impacts can be used to evaluate also the economic (LCC, Life Cycle Costing) and the social impacts (Social LCA), covering the three pillars of sustainability.
Why RINA?
RINA supports companies for the development of environmental declarations, providing information about the pathway to be followed, collecting the necessary information and performing the LCA. Some environmental labels can also be used as mean of proof to respond to some requirements defined within calls for tender (Green Public Procurement; CAM - Criteri Ambientali Minimi in Italy).
