There are two core principles underlying an LCA:
- The Life Cycle Thinking principle.
- The multi-impact approach.
Life Cycle Thinking means that all stages of a product life cycle are considered in the assessment, ie not only direct emissions or resource extraction happening on site, but also indirect environmental impacts further upstream or downstream one’s own gates.
In many cases, the highest environmental impacts of a product are linked to its raw materials or its use phase and thus are occurring upstream or downstream the production gates. Not considering them would thus underestimate the real footprint but also would not allow to see if the implementation of impact reduction strategies, for example by the producers, would actually reduce the total footprint of the product, or if the burden is only shifted towards other life cycle stages.