Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assess environmental impacts of different subjects, such as products, services, processes and economic activities. They can also be used as a basis for reducing the environmental impacts, for example by highlighting the problem areas and finding alternatives for the causes.
The core idea of a LCA is to look at the complete life cycle of a subject and both identify and quantify the different sources of environmental loads. There exists many different types of LCAs, some compare different products to each other and can be more simplified while others investigate the life cycle of one product in high detail and accuracy, some describe the current situation while others focus on capturing consequences of decisions. LCAs can be constructed based on processes when there is detailed data available but they can also be based on input-output data.