Every product placed on the market goes through a series of phases that lead it to impact the environment in various ways. The set of these steps, starting from production - or, even before that, from the extraction of raw materials - up to final disposal, are called life cycle.
To make the life cycle of a product more eco-sustainable, it is necessary to act on the various phases, ensuring that each one reduces its environmental impact. The latter can be evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment or LCA. Although it is not mandatory to carry out such analysis, understand how is LCA measured it is of fundamental importance for companies that wish to accurately monitor the level of eco-sustainability of their products and identify any shortcomings or steps that can be improved.
In this article we will discover what, specifically, the life cycle of a product is and how to reduce its impact on the environment from an eco-sustainable perspective.
What is the product life cycle
When talking about the product life cycle, we can refer to two parallel paths:
- that relating to the "product" understood as a range of items: in this case, the 5 phases (development, introduction, growth, maturity, decline) evaluate the lifespan of the items from the point of view of marketing and consumer choices;
- the one that takes into consideration the life of the individual product: in this case, the various phases take into account the production, distribution, placing on the market and disposal processes of individual items, and allow the environmental impact to be calculated.
Life cycle and impact on the environment
Every single phase of a product's life cycle has a greater or lesser impact on the environment. In particular:
- during production, the impact depends on the channel through which raw materials and various materials are obtained, on the production processes adopted, on the consumption in terms of water and energy, on the energy sources used and on the harmful emissions released into the air;
- being distributed, to impact on the environment the materials used for packaging and the means of transport chosen, as well as the distances traveled to bring individual products to their destination;
- during use it is any emissions from the product that create an impact on the surrounding environment;
- in the final stage, that is, that of disposal, what plays the most important role are the materials with which the article - but also any packaging - was produced and the possibility of recycling them in whole or in part, as well as adapting the object - or the packaging.
The life cycle of the product from an eco-sustainable perspective
To make a product eco-sustainable, it is necessary to ensure that each step of its life cycle impacts the environment as little as possible. To achieve this, companies must aim to reduce harmful emissions at all stages, to use, as far as possible, clean energy and recycled and recyclable materials, Ea extend the life of the product as much as possible.
