189
Industry associations – similar to companies – are important sources of high
quality life cycle data for products that best represent the industrial reality. They can
moreover disseminate information about sustainable products and sustainable consumption aspects to their members and bring in the voice of the represented industry
into the public discussion on sustainable consumption.
Green and consumer NGOs can support bringing understanding and knowledge
on sustainable consumption to consumers and contribute to the public discussions
on sustainable lifestyles.
Research bodies and consultants are essential to help increasing the understanding and knowledge base on secondary consequences of consumption decisions, by
developing better methods and models, and by offering software tools and data to
support the analysis.
5 Conclusions and Next Steps
Life cycle management as a process has a history that reaches back more than 25
years, while as a term it has risen to prominence only about 15 years ago. Big progress has been made in collecting and analyzing data and information on environmental interventions along the supply-chains and working together to improve the
environmental performance of many thousands of products and many tens of thousands of processes, worldwide. The life cycle data availability for this kind of analysis has constantly grown and now allows – while less so for countries with a shorter
history in life cycle approaches – to get reliable results also for complex products,
particularly, if the producing industry is actively involved and experienced experts
support the analysis.
Product life cycle analysis and management was and still is the core also for the
slowly developing field of sustainable consumption analysis, which needs to employ
in addition to LCA complementary methods and data to also capture the secondary
consequences outside the analysed product and directly connected products. While
first life cycle based studies on the secondary consequences go back to the late
1990s, given the much more complex effects and higher effort, a much smaller share
of studies has looked into it and the body of evidence is growing only slowly.
With increasingly better availability of process-based life cycle data and more
and more companies publishing Environmental Product Declarations and Footprints,
the evidence and process-based life cycle data basis for consumption and lifestyle
studies is now further expanding.
If we want to achieve a reduced global environmental impact, we need to
approach this from both the production and the consumption side. Unfortunately,
the reduced environmental impact of many products and per functional unit is so far
overcompensated by increased overall consumption – more products with a larger
function per average person and an overall growing world population.
13 From Sustainable Production to Sustainable Consumption
Industry associations – similar to companies – are important sources of high
quality life cycle data for products that best represent the industrial reality. They can
moreover disseminate information about sustainable products and sustainable consumption aspects to their members and bring in the voice of the represented industry
into the public discussion on sustainable consumption.
Green and consumer NGOs can support bringing understanding and knowledge
on sustainable consumption to consumers and contribute to the public discussions
on sustainable lifestyles.
Research bodies and consultants are essential to help increasing the understanding and knowledge base on secondary consequences of consumption decisions, by
developing better methods and models, and by offering software tools and data to
support the analysis.
5 Conclusions and Next Steps
Life cycle management as a process has a history that reaches back more than 25
years, while as a term it has risen to prominence only about 15 years ago. Big progress has been made in collecting and analyzing data and information on environmental interventions along the supply-chains and working together to improve the
environmental performance of many thousands of products and many tens of thousands of processes, worldwide. The life cycle data availability for this kind of analysis has constantly grown and now allows – while less so for countries with a shorter
history in life cycle approaches – to get reliable results also for complex products,
particularly, if the producing industry is actively involved and experienced experts
support the analysis.
Product life cycle analysis and management was and still is the core also for the
slowly developing field of sustainable consumption analysis, which needs to employ
in addition to LCA complementary methods and data to also capture the secondary
consequences outside the analysed product and directly connected products. While
first life cycle based studies on the secondary consequences go back to the late
1990s, given the much more complex effects and higher effort, a much smaller share
of studies has looked into it and the body of evidence is growing only slowly.
With increasingly better availability of process-based life cycle data and more
and more companies publishing Environmental Product Declarations and Footprints,
the evidence and process-based life cycle data basis for consumption and lifestyle
studies is now further expanding.
If we want to achieve a reduced global environmental impact, we need to
approach this from both the production and the consumption side. Unfortunately,
the reduced environmental impact of many products and per functional unit is so far
overcompensated by increased overall consumption – more products with a larger
function per average person and an overall growing world population.
13 From Sustainable Production to Sustainable Consumption