Guide to Life Cycle Inventory

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) identifies and quantifies energy and resource use and environmental discharges through the entire product life cycle, from cradle to grave. Resource inputs, energy requirements and releases to air, water and land for each step in the manufacture of a product or process are quantified, from extraction of the raw materials to disposal of waste.

LCI studies are usually comparative analyses in which two or more packages are compared on the basis of providing equivalent function, with the results giving an environmental profile of the systems studied. The LCI identifies those system components or life cycle steps that are the main contributors to environmental burdens such as energy use, solid waste and atmospheric and waterborne emissions, enabling companies to effectively target environmental improvement efforts.

Despite the increasing popularity of LCIs in both industry and government, the technique’s limitations are often overlooked. LCIs are not able to assess the actual environmental effects of emissions and wastes from the product because these will depend on when, where and how they are released into the environment. Secondly, LCIs do not consider the various functions a package performs. Thus, when comparing several different packages for the same product, an LCI takes no account of the convenience function such as whether or not the package is reclosable, easy to pour from, etc. A third limitation is that LCIs do not consider costs.

The carbon footprint is a small excerpt from an LCI and includes only the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are released as part of the processes of creating, modifying, transporting, storing, using, providing, recycling or disposing of goods and services.

The Publicly Available Specification 2050:2010 Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services has been developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in response to calls for a consistent method for assessing the life cycle GHG emissions of goods and services. The Carbon Reduction Label was launched in the UK in 2007 and has appeared on more than 5000 individual product lines. The Carbon Reduction Label was launched in Australia in 2010 but to date take-up has been very limited and publicity about it almost non-existent.