Life Cycle Analysis Purpose, Phases & Example

What is a Lifecycle Analysis?

Humans have changed the whole world. We built skyscrapers, run wires across the planet to connect every continent, cut down trees, and pumped gases into the atmosphere. We've changed the way the earth looks from space: you can see lights by night, and the Great Wall of China by day. And we've even changed the climate. Humans are the biggest and most powerful force on earth today. In fact, this time period in history is described by academics as the anthropocene, which means the era of humans. So it is important to fully understand the impacts we've had on the world, both good impacts and bad impacts. And lifecycle analysis helps with this.

Climate change protest: our impact on the environment is causing major problems

A lifecycle analysis (otherwise known as lifecycle assessment) is a way of figuring out the overall impact that a particular human product has on the environment in its entire existence. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds, because there are many steps in producing even the simplest products. We have to extract raw materials like metals and rock from the ground, chemicals from plants, wood from trees, and glass from sand. Then we have to turn those materials into either the product directly or the parts to make it up. Then we need to put those parts together to make the final product.

But it doesn't end there. Even after a product is made, it takes resources to transport it from place to place, to use it, to repair it when it breaks, and to get rid of it when it's no longer working as needed. All of these things have an impact on the environment, and all of them use energy. So a lifecycle analysis involves a lot of different steps put together to make the overall environmental impact of the product. But it really is a sensible way to figure out what impact the product will have on the world.

Overview of lifecycle analysis

Example of Lifecycle Analysis

You could do a lifecycle analysis of practically anything, but let's look at something quite complicated like a car. A car has a long lifecycle. First the raw materials needed to make the car have to be extracted. This includes metal from the ground which makes up most of the car, but also chemicals from plants to make plastics for the inside of the car, sand that is melted to make the windows, rubber from rubber trees to seal parts of the car, and many other little things that go together to make it.

Those raw materials have to be shaped into each of the individual parts that makes up the car, which involves energy. For example you have to melt down the sand, metals, and plastics and shape them into each part. The materials also had to be transported from the mines and forest in which they were made to factories whether parts were made, and then those parts have to be transported to assembly plants. Next the car must be built, usually by robots which put all the parts together. Those robots use electricity, and generating electricity also has an impact on the environment.

Robots are used to build cars and those robots require energy

Once a car is made, it's transported to a dealership to be sold, using more fuel and energy. Then once the car is bought, the happy owner of the shiny new car uses fuel in that car, pumping even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and using more energy. When the car breaks down or parts of it need maintenance, more natural resources are used to fix the car, give it an oil change, or replace a punctured tire. And finally, years later after the car has changed hands several times, the car will be scrapped because it's too old or broken to fix, or simply no one wants it anymore. The car will be transported to a dump, or possibly some of the parts will be recycled.