LCA - is it an end-all-be-all?

 25/12/22 07:38 p.m.

Background

Always understood how important LCA is but, at certain times and circumstances, LCAs really make things more complicated than it is supposed to be. Then again, without it, we would have no idea how accurate certain claims are.

Introduction

Life cycle assessment is an impact measurement and analysis methodology and tool that helps to quantify the impact of products. The scope of the LCA can be pre-determined and it can take a cradle-to-gate, or cradle-to-grave perspective (Clearloop, 2021).

The pros and cons of LCA are listed below:

Pros	Cons
Provides a comprehensive overview and review of the product’s environmental impact, which is highly recognised globally as it is also wildly shared and is a best practice for companies under the ISO 140000 standards.	Prioritises environmental impact and neglects the social aspects and impacts.
Provides a comparative analysis for companies to identify areas of improvement based on the breakdown of the impact created per stage.	LCAs are highly subjected to different contexts and details, hence they cannot be easily compared across different products unless the methodologies of the LCAs used are similar.
Ease in integrating LCAs into scoring frameworks and systems to create a single outcome that can be quantifiable from the company’s point-of-view (Recipe scoring system).	Figuring out the functional unit for comparison would be difficult and estimation errors can easily be amplified.

The impact that can be created through LCA seems to require a few key success factors. I looked at two different case studies specifically the applications of LCAs. These will be able to shed some light on the helpfulness of LCAs. The case studies are the chemicals and plastics industry: Amcor (ASSET™ Life Cycle Assessment) and the fashion industry: Sustainable Apparel Coalition (Higg Index Material Sustainability Index).

Chemicals - Plastics Industry: Amcor

Back in 2009, Amcor started developing the ASSET™ Life Cycle Assessment tool for internal and external purposes. Till now, the tool has compiled more than 4,200 LCAs which also included and charted the growth of certain packaging materials when innovative measures were taken. And since 2009, Amcor has been updating the dataset with the most updated and recent polymer and material database. And in 2012, the tool’s methodology and reporting content is certified by the Carbon Trust biannually, which is a well-renowned company in carbon management and measurement (Amcor, 2012).

ASSET™ works by considering each step of the packaging material’s life cycle:

1. Sourcing of raw materials
• Harvesting or Production of the materials
2. Manufacture into the packaging for
• Energy Consumption
• Water Consumption
• Emissions Consumption
3. Transportation & Logistics
4. End-of-Use

With the usage of ASSET™, Amcor has decreased the amount of PET resin by up to 24 million pounds, which is approximately equal to 57 million pounds of carbon emissions from 2012 to 2015 (Ottewell, 2015). Most importantly, the tool helps to engage with customers and provide a very comprehensive comparison because the methodology is the same across the board and this helps give a transparent analysis for customers to choose the more environmental-friendly options. And being a producer, Amcor can make direct decisions that would impact the volume of production and reduce its emissions.

 

Fashion Industry: Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Mid this year, The New York Times slammed the Higg Index: Material Sustainability Index, that is initially developed by the unlikely partnership between Patagonia and Walmart, for how unfair the comparison is (Tabuchi, 2022)

Just a bit of background and history, the partnership started in 2009, and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and the Higg Index were the fruits of the collaboration. In 2012, Nike shared with SAC its own Index (Nike Considered Index), which helped built the database further (Feloni, 2019).

The fashion industry has been under the spotlight for a long time, with critics throwing all types of shades on the industry from how wasteful and detrimental fast fashion is to the environment to human rights violations in factories to the offshoring of factories overseas, creating “pollution havens” in other developing countries.

To put things into perspective, the clothing and textile industry contributes up to 8% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions and textiles alone are responsible for about 9% of total microplastic that is channelled into oceans and water bodies in a year (UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, n.d.).

The Higg Index has been claimed by SAC to be “scientifically and externally reviewed”, however, the database contributed through LCA studies done by researchers, is criticised to be too narrow in scope, which makes its applicability to the entire industry very misleading and inappropriate. With its potential of becoming a global industry standard, the Higg Index is being highly relied upon by many companies. With more than 250 members in the coalition, of the likes of big players such as Nike, H&M. The database that Higg Index can provide is the best in the industry, though it is dependent upon availability.

Unfortunately, the LCAs that Higg Index has been based upon have been under fire because of (1) the scope of LCA, (2) the exclusion and inclusion of specific inputs/outputs of materials, (3) inaccurate representation of the whole industry. The challenges that SAC face is drastically different from Amcor, largely because the Higg Index is an industry-wide comparison index, instead of a company-specific index. There is limited availability of LCAs that have the same methodologies.

Scope of LCA

Higg Index only focuses on cradle-to-gate and all materials are evaluated only till the gate (Kassatly, 2020). Even though the impact of the material (i.e., polyester) used has a long-lasting impact on the environment beyond the gate, such as the clothing shedding microplastic fibres into the waterways. And in 2020, it was estimated that there are 9.25 to 15.86 million tons of microplastics can be found on the ocean floor (Barrett et al., 2020). Furthermore, scientists have also concluded that wearing clothes can release even greater quantities of microplastic fibres to the environment than wearing them (De Falco et al., 2020). A study funded by Patagonia, and done by researchers at UCSB estimated that a synthetic fleece jacket releases an average of 1.7g of microplastic fibres every single time it hits the washing machine (Hartline et al., 2016). The microfibers will then flow through the local wastewater planet and up to 40% of them will enter the waterways because they are too small to be filtered out. Hence, limiting the scope of LCA from cradle to gate will be very misleading and insufficient to justify the use of certain materials over others.

Exclusion and Inclusion of Certain Inputs/Outputs to favour Polyester, Organic Cotton

“Manure is a by-product of the livestock industry, just like hides for leather. Arguably, organic cotton's most important input is manure. Therefore, omitting the impact of same, means current estimates of organic cotton emissions are seriously understated.” For Higg Index, the impact of manure on the environment both upstream and during its usage is not considered and the justification offered is that the manure used is the waste of another system hence, is able to be taken into account as “burden-free” in the LCA that the Higg Index referenced from. However, the same methodology is not used the same as other natural materials such as leather, the hides for leather production is also an unavoidable waste from the beef industry (“waste of another system” as well) (Kassatly, 2019).

Inaccurate Representation of the Whole Industry

“Producers of natural fibres say the Higg Index has portrayed that shift as positive for the environment based on questionable data.” The LCA study that is used to report on the impact of silk production, for instance, is based on a 2014 study on 100 silk farmers based in a state in India, whose farming practices are heavily reliant upon water irrigation. And the lead researcher had no idea that Higg Index was using his team’s research for an industry representation of silk production. In its LCA report, the team specifically included the fact that the report findings are largely for domestic usage, not actually representative of the global outlook for silk production. The final comparison would show the jarring differences between silk and synthetic products: “silk is 30 times worse than synthetic products” (Tabuchi, 2022).

 

In summary, it can be concluded that LCA is not the end-all and be-all for sustainability. Sustainability is more than just producing, it is all about living. LCA is unable to holistically reflect all different aspects of sustainability as it only has a strong focus on the environmental impact. Even then, the scope and methodology of the research study would be important to note. The devil for LCAs is always in the details, especially when a comparison is required. There are difficulties in providing a global benchmark only because there are many changing variables and it is seemingly easier for different companies to helm their own LCAs for their product portfolio, before coming together to align data and create and aggregate all data points, like how Higg Index came about. There are many different types of LCA which need to be adjusted before comparison. And when done fraudulently or non-vigilantly, it is easy to push for a narrative that provides an inaccurate representation of what is truly the least impactful to the environment.

I think many people are expecting life cycle assessment to be the silver bullet in bringing more visibility to different said solutions to improve the situation. Unfortunately, LCA is very much limited in its own ways because of the rigour and resources that are required. Depending on the subject of interest, there might not be sufficient research or data points available that suit the climate/context/scope as well. Though I cannot come up with anything better, we definitely have to take LCAs with a grain of salt and should not be blindly comparing LCAs to LCAs, but we need to be fair to the subjects of interest as well.

 

References

Tabuchi, H. (2022, June 20). How Fashion Giants Recast Plastic as Good for the Planet. The New York Times. https://www-nytimes-com.libproxy.smu.edu.sg/2022/06/12/climate/vegan-leather-synthetics-fashion-industry.html?searchResultPosition=1

Feloni, R. (2019, April 25). Walmart and Patagonia were once the 'odd couple' of sustainability. Now, the world's biggest apparel brands are lining up to follow their example. Business Insiders. https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-patagonia-sustainable-apparel-coalition-higg-index-2019-4

UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion. (n.d.). What is the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion? https://unfashionalliance.org/

Clearloop. (2021, March 24). Gate vs Grave: What’s the best way to measure your carbon footprint? https://clearloop.us/2021/03/24/cradle-to-gate-vs-cradle-to-grave/