Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a method to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life from-cradle-to-grave (i.e., from raw material extraction through material processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and end-of-life). To do so, it quantifies the inputs and outputs from all the processes involved in the life cycle of the product (making up the product system), relates them to a certain amount of the product’s function (e.g. providing 1000 lumen for 1000 hours), and converts those exchanges with the environment into environmental impact indicators (e.g. CO2 eq. for greenhouse gases), to obtain the environmental profile (series of indicator results) of the product. It is thus possible to quantitatively compare products with different technical performances on the same basis.
