Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs): What Are They And What Do They Mean In Practical Terms?

Stefaan Bekaert

A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method of evaluating the environmental impacts associated with a product or service, From the extraction of raw materials through to its end-of-life disposal (Figure 1). An LCA is much wider than just the carbon footprint, also covering other factors such as eutrophication, water usage, and acidification.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the life cycle of a product and the way in which an environmental damage calculation can be done. The stages of the LCA study are visualised from left to right, with a final impact calculation (ReCiPe) at both midpoint and endpoint level

 

LCAs need to follow specific guidelines that indicate how to conduct an LCA study. Examples are the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 14000 or the product environmental footprint category rules (PEFCR).

In general, an LCA study involves four phases:

 

Phase 1 - Define the goal and scope

The goal is the product you are going to make an LCA analysis for e.g., 1 kg of OptiPhos Plus or Monimax. The scope sets the boundaries of the analysis. It always starts from extraction of the raw materials (the "cradle") and can go up to the recycle and reuse of the product. In some cases, companies measure up to the point of disposal for another product (back to "cradle"). Like most in our industry, Huvepharma chooses to analyse up to the factory gate ("cradle-to-gate") as we have no control over what happens after the products leave our facilities.

 

Phase 2 - Make an inventory analysis

This phase identifies and quantifies energy, waste and material usage, and environmental release during the production process within the set boundaries. This is the most complex and time-consuming part of an LCA and requires detailed insights on the full process. As Huvepharma controls the complete process, it gives us real advantage compared to other companies who need to rely on information from their suppliers.

 

Phase 3 - The life cycle impact assessment method (LCA)

The LCIA translates all the information from phase 2 into a set of well-defined impact categories. Huvepharma uses the ReCiPe LCIA method which gives 18 impact categories. They show the effect on a single environmental problem, e.g., global warming, terrestrial acidification or freshwater eutrophication. Other LCIA methods might have more or less impact categories but for all LCIA models, each of these impact categories are linked to three higher environment end point levels:

  1. Effect on human health
  2. Ecosystems / biodiversity
  3. Resource scarcity

 

Phase 4 - Interpretation

In this phase, you can compare the environmental impact of different products. The LCA also gives you an insight into the environmental impact of each step in the production process. As a vertically integrated company with complete control over our production processes, the LCAs help us find hotspots in production and identify areas for improvement.

 

Conclusion

The feed industry is committed to delivering high-quality data on feed additives including traceability and accuracy. At Huvepharma, we take the lead in providing the livestock industry with full LCAs for our products. We already have 20 product LCAs finalised and will add another 15 to this list by the end of August. Our customers can use our LCAs to calculate the carbon footprint of their company. This demonstrates Huvepharma's commitment to being a reliable partner helping our customers in their sustainability journey.