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resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the
life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations.” (Norwegian Ministry of the Environment 1994, adapted). Beyond the product perspective to life cycle management (LCM), this definition highlights the needs
fulfilment, or utility, of the products. Indeed, but there are other aspects that differ
when taking a consumption perspective on products: “Sustainable consumption is
often seen as a concept mirroring the production side. While sustainable production
has a production and upstream perspective searching opportunities to alter production processes and related activities in a more sustainable direction, sustainable
consumption is directed to how and why goods and services are demanded, used
and consumed.” (Thidell 2011). This indicates why there is a controversy about the
“right” way to assess the environmental performance of products, which the authors
try to explain in the following, before explaining the details:
Life cycle assessment (LCA) of products guided by ISO 14040 (2006a) and
14044 (2006b) is a well-established framework for analysing, improving and comparing the environmental performance of products. ISO LCA is also the core basis
for life cycle management (LCM), while further standards that are based on ISO
14040 and 14044 support it. With the current framework ISO 14044:2006, the
interim product and waste flows as well as the interventions with the environment
are taken into account as the inputs and outputs of the analyzed system. The effects
on other, not functionally connected products and infrastructures, are, however, not
addressed in the framework and also not implied.
1
In other words, the current framework of LCA is taking a product perspective, not a consumption perspective.
This product perspective and ISO LCA itself has been criticized (e.g. by Girod
et al. 2010) for lacking to capture the various secondary consequences of consumption decisions, including due to changes in the available income, time, and other
household resources.
2
In this chapter, instead of asking for changing product LCA, the authors follow a
different approach, namely that of proposing differentiated life cycle modelling
methods for the two fundamentally different perspectives: the product perspective
and the consumption perspective, resulting in dedicated approaches for different
actors and applications (Lundie et al. 2007; European Commission 2010; Wolf et al.
2012): different applications imply a different purpose and scope of supported decisions and hence require a differentiated guidance. The Product Environmental
Footprint (PEF) guide (European Commission 2013), that largely builds on the product-decision support (“Situation A”) guidance variant of the ILCD Handbook
(European Commission 2010), is an example of such application-specific guidance.
The authors argue that the product perspective is a very useful logic for product
developers: The decisions by the consumers beyond the use and end-of-life man1 The system expansion to include functions within the system boundary of the analysed product
serves exclusively to render two products of an only partly identical set of functions comparable.
2 Such rebound effects and economy-wide consequences can also be environmentally positive, i.e.,
result in a negative environmental impacts, why we adopt here the more inclusive term “secondary
consequences” of the ILCD Handbook, instead of “rebound effects” that implies a negative effect.
M.-A. Wolf and K. Chomkhamsri
resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the
life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations.” (Norwegian Ministry of the Environment 1994, adapted). Beyond the product perspective to life cycle management (LCM), this definition highlights the needs
fulfilment, or utility, of the products. Indeed, but there are other aspects that differ
when taking a consumption perspective on products: “Sustainable consumption is
often seen as a concept mirroring the production side. While sustainable production
has a production and upstream perspective searching opportunities to alter production processes and related activities in a more sustainable direction, sustainable
consumption is directed to how and why goods and services are demanded, used
and consumed.” (Thidell 2011). This indicates why there is a controversy about the
“right” way to assess the environmental performance of products, which the authors
try to explain in the following, before explaining the details:
Life cycle assessment (LCA) of products guided by ISO 14040 (2006a) and
14044 (2006b) is a well-established framework for analysing, improving and comparing the environmental performance of products. ISO LCA is also the core basis
for life cycle management (LCM), while further standards that are based on ISO
14040 and 14044 support it. With the current framework ISO 14044:2006, the
interim product and waste flows as well as the interventions with the environment
are taken into account as the inputs and outputs of the analyzed system. The effects
on other, not functionally connected products and infrastructures, are, however, not
addressed in the framework and also not implied.
1
In other words, the current framework of LCA is taking a product perspective, not a consumption perspective.
This product perspective and ISO LCA itself has been criticized (e.g. by Girod
et al. 2010) for lacking to capture the various secondary consequences of consumption decisions, including due to changes in the available income, time, and other
household resources.
2
In this chapter, instead of asking for changing product LCA, the authors follow a
different approach, namely that of proposing differentiated life cycle modelling
methods for the two fundamentally different perspectives: the product perspective
and the consumption perspective, resulting in dedicated approaches for different
actors and applications (Lundie et al. 2007; European Commission 2010; Wolf et al.
2012): different applications imply a different purpose and scope of supported decisions and hence require a differentiated guidance. The Product Environmental
Footprint (PEF) guide (European Commission 2013), that largely builds on the product-decision support (“Situation A”) guidance variant of the ILCD Handbook
(European Commission 2010), is an example of such application-specific guidance.
The authors argue that the product perspective is a very useful logic for product
developers: The decisions by the consumers beyond the use and end-of-life man1 The system expansion to include functions within the system boundary of the analysed product
serves exclusively to render two products of an only partly identical set of functions comparable.
2 Such rebound effects and economy-wide consequences can also be environmentally positive, i.e.,
result in a negative environmental impacts, why we adopt here the more inclusive term “secondary
consequences” of the ILCD Handbook, instead of “rebound effects” that implies a negative effect.
M.-A. Wolf and K. Chomkhamsri