Quantification of the Environmental Impact

In this chapter, we focus on quantifying the environmental pillar of the People-Planet-Profit triple bottom line by introducing life cycle assessment (LCA). Life cycle assessment is rooted in life cycle thinking, which approaches products, services, and production systems holistically in terms of impact on the environment. Life cycle thinking advocates taking into account the environmental impact of every stage in the life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials, material processing, transportation, distribution, consumption, reuse/recycling, to disposal. Life cycle assessment is a well-established analytical method for quantifying the environmental impact of a product, service, or production process. This method is traditionally used to study four types of problems: (i) assessment of individual products to understand their environmental impact, (ii) comparison of process paths in the production of substitutable products or processes, (iii) comparison of alternatives for delivering a given function (Jacquemin et al. 2012), and (iv) to analyze the phases of the product or service life cycle that have a more considerable environmental impact – also known as “hotspots” (Piekarski et al. 2013). Several industries, companies, and associations are actively developing LCA approaches. The European Union (EU) is one of the leading global regions advocating life cycle thinking and assessment to ensure the identification of the best environmental outcome.