Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment for the Environmental Evaluation of Products in the Supply Chain

Abstract

In this chapter, the use of streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) methods for the evaluation of supply chains are analysed in order to reach SDG 12 (responsible production and consumption). In order to meet the objective, a bibliographical review was performed; afterwards, those cases that fulfilled the criteria were subject to a deeper analysis. The relationship of supply chains in the context of SDG and streamlined LCA was examined as well. The outcomes of the investigation are divided into five sections, four of them are focused in different types of LCA that aids in the communication of environmental aspects of products: (1) the development of a full LCA, (2) different types of direct LCA such as carbon and water footprint, (3) the use of environmental labelling and (4) the use of streamlined LCA and computational tools to display and support in the interpretations of results. In the fifth part of the results section, a reflection on sustainable supply chains in the SDG context is given. Based on this analysis, there are two notable conclusions: streamlined LCA helps in the fulfilment of SDG in organizations and furthermore, full LCA and streamlined LCA are complementary to each other.