14 Life cycle assessment
A governance tool for transition
towards a circular bioeconomy?
Andreas Brekke, Kari- Anne Lyng,
Johanna Olofsson and Julia Szulecka
14.1 Introduction
There is broad agreement that human activities should be sustainable.
Although most activities have an impact on the environment, no human
activity should restrict the possibility for other people to meet their needs.
Sustainability is easy to agree upon on a general and abstract level, but it is
harder to judge what it means in practice. When is an activity sustainable and
when is it unsustainable? Which products are sustainable and which are not?
While those are not easily answerable questions, policymakers must have a
measure allowing them to grade sustainability, helping them develop longterm strategies, current regulation or appropriate policy incentives. Similarly,
companies need to know that the manufacturing of their products does not
harm people or the environment unnecessarily and that they can sustainably
create value for the company, its shareholders and the society at large.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often referred to as a method or tool to
answer questions about what is more or less sustainable, at least in relation to
environmental sustainability (Finnveden et al., 2009). The International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) defined LCA as “compilation and
evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a
product system throughout its life cycle” (ISO, 2006). Recent years have seen
a development in both the breadth and depth of LCA, where dimensions of
sustainability other than the direct impact on natural environment have been
included and where impacts are modelled more specifically.
Already by the beginning of the 1970s, the Environmental Protection
Agency in the USA was considering the use of LCA for all products as part of
public policy (Reed, 2012). Following the United Nations Conference on
the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 and the 1973 oil crisis –
both drawing attention to finite resources, LCA – or Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis as it was called – was seen as a way to understand
different products’ impact on the environment. For a number of reasons, for
instance the “cancellation” of “peak oil”, the interest in LCA declined during
the second half of the 1970s and the method was deemed impractical as a
regulatory tool (ibid.). At the end of the 1980s, a joint initiative by the
A governance tool for transition
towards a circular bioeconomy?
Andreas Brekke, Kari- Anne Lyng,
Johanna Olofsson and Julia Szulecka
14.1 Introduction
There is broad agreement that human activities should be sustainable.
Although most activities have an impact on the environment, no human
activity should restrict the possibility for other people to meet their needs.
Sustainability is easy to agree upon on a general and abstract level, but it is
harder to judge what it means in practice. When is an activity sustainable and
when is it unsustainable? Which products are sustainable and which are not?
While those are not easily answerable questions, policymakers must have a
measure allowing them to grade sustainability, helping them develop longterm strategies, current regulation or appropriate policy incentives. Similarly,
companies need to know that the manufacturing of their products does not
harm people or the environment unnecessarily and that they can sustainably
create value for the company, its shareholders and the society at large.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often referred to as a method or tool to
answer questions about what is more or less sustainable, at least in relation to
environmental sustainability (Finnveden et al., 2009). The International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) defined LCA as “compilation and
evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a
product system throughout its life cycle” (ISO, 2006). Recent years have seen
a development in both the breadth and depth of LCA, where dimensions of
sustainability other than the direct impact on natural environment have been
included and where impacts are modelled more specifically.
Already by the beginning of the 1970s, the Environmental Protection
Agency in the USA was considering the use of LCA for all products as part of
public policy (Reed, 2012). Following the United Nations Conference on
the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 and the 1973 oil crisis –
both drawing attention to finite resources, LCA – or Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis as it was called – was seen as a way to understand
different products’ impact on the environment. For a number of reasons, for
instance the “cancellation” of “peak oil”, the interest in LCA declined during
the second half of the 1970s and the method was deemed impractical as a
regulatory tool (ibid.). At the end of the 1980s, a joint initiative by the