Life cycle analysis is powerful, but it can't answer all questions

A recent sustainability summit focused on the importance of packaging in the sustainable or "green" product development cycle. At the heart of this discussion is sustainable materials production and the need for near-closed loop material flows in industrial systems.At one end of the spectrum of considerations is the efficiency of virgin resource utilization, and at the other is the efficient reclamation and recycling of materials.

Optimization of the materials that make up products and packages is a viable sustainability strategy. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to understand the interlinked impacts of production, use and end-of-life processes. LCA is a methodology to understand the implications of design decisions along the life cycle of product and packaging. It offers powerful analytical information about potential environmental and human health implications that can be fed into the product development processes.

At the same time, it's important to remember that LCA is a methodology that is rapidly evolving. While many aspects of LCA methodologies are being developed and tested, the availability of public life cycle inventory data that are current, transparent and relevant remains the limiting factor for thorough, fair and economical use of LCA. One of the most common arguments against the widespread use of LCA is that it is not a good tool to capture human and environmental toxicity impacts due to data and methodological limitations.

While this is a valid concern, at times the limitations of LCA are framed in such a way as to imply that the methodology is defective if it cannot provide definitive answers for everything. There is a strong desire among the user community for tools that give a score or an answer for any and all questions about environmental and human health assessment.

Tooling up

LCA is but one tool, and its strengths include providing multi-attribute environment assessment, wide applicability across industrial sectors and identification of areas of greatest impact or greatest improvement. It offers an objective and science-based framework for the evaluation of alternatives.

As sustainability becomes a core strategic objective for a growing number of businesses, it is understandable to want one tool to give us all the answers. Yet the basic fact is that "the environment" is by far the most complex system we could ever attempt to assess, particularly under conditions of imperfect and incomplete information. To expect one tool to provide all the answers is unrealistic and unreasonable. We will ultimately need a suite of assessment and monitoring tools to support understanding of sustainability issues, just as we currently use multiple tools to inform us about other complex systems.

For example, every company relies on a suite of sophisticated accounting and market analysis tools to assess its financial stability, its product offerings and other decisions. Is it then reasonable to expect one tool-LCA or anything else-to answer all the questions about the implications of industrial practices on eco systems?

Let's shift the discussion from what a given tool such as LCA cannot do to what it can provide, while continuing to develop methodologies and tools for other difficult questions such as human and environmental toxicity and other yet unidentified issues that will arise at the intersection of industry and environment. To fully implement strategies that produce the systemic changes needed to achieve sustainability in the industrial system, we will need an assortment of specialized tools and techniques that help answer specific questions leading to informed decisions.

Minnal Mistry is project manager for the Sustainable Packaging Coalition,
a project of GreenBlue (www.greenblue.org). For additional information,
email [email protected].