Applying life cycle assessment

Life cycle assessment (commonly known by its acronym LCA) is a useful sustainability tool and has many applications to support packaging decisions. In LCA, environmental impacts of product and packaging systems can be quantified in line with internationally accepted methodologies. With this knowledge, strategies can be identified and adopted that achieve the most effective and efficient environmental outcomes, and packaging design can be optimised. This chapter provides a general introduction to understanding and getting started with LCA, in particular for its application to product-packaging and packaging-system design. One important insight is that LCA studies have the potential to dispel common myths about packaging and sustainability issues. Packaging LCAs sometimes show that 'rules of thumb' or 'common sense solutions' simply do not apply or work in practice