A life cycle assessment is an analysis of a product for it’s environmental impact. The “life cycle” of a product is every phase a product goes through, from the time it is taken out of the Earth to the time it is returned to the Earth. The assessment generally consists of four stages: defining the scope, an inventory analysis, an impact assessment and the interpretation of the results of the other stages. Life Cycle Assessments are becoming more common because of the growing concern for environmentally friendly products. Life cycle assessments are used for their depth of analysis into the different phases of a product, providing a more complete picture to the environmental impact. The Four Steps to a Life Cycle Assessment Step 1: Defining the Goal and Scope The first step to a life cycle assessment is to define the goal and scope of the project. Factors such as the intended audience will affect the goal of the report. For example, if a company is …show more content…
A life style assessment can be streamlined using three simple strategies. Limiting the scope of the assessment to only the phases of the product’s life cycle that cause the greatest impact is the first way to streamline a life cycle assessment. The second way to simplify the data is to describe the data qualitatively instead of quantitatively. Describing the data qualitatively is also a way to normalize the information for a wider audience. The third strategy is to focus mainly on one specific impact category. This condenses the product’s impacts by only highlighting the environmental impact that is most prevalent to the product. Using these strategies will condense the life cycle assessment into only the most essential information, making it assessable to wider audience while still conveying the impact of the