Event

Sustainability (i.e. the long term viability of humans in harmony with the environment) has been identified as a critical issue for society and industry.  The question, from the perspective of industry, is what actions individual companies can take to promote sustainability.  Also given the complexity of environmental systems, companies can easily make mistakes by taking actions that have unintended consequences.  Products such as CFCs or tetraethyl lead can sometimes have great performance for a specific objective but have disastrous effects that only become visible after use with unfortunate and sometimes costly impacts.
Life cycle assessments (LCA) were originally started for better understanding the full life cycle (e.g. extraction, supply, manufacturing, distribution, use, disposal/ recycling/reuse) of an aspect of the product – usually packaging.  With time, companies have realized the benefits of the use of LCA for everything from product and process design to the whole company’s impact and have used it to help them make sensible decisions more broadly on products or projects.
The objective of conducting a LCA is to compare two or more products or aspects of a product across the full range of environmental impacts that emanate from the provision of these products or services and then use that information to improve the product or service to minimize or eliminate harm. 
A detailed LCA can provide counterintuitive results that initiate a fresh review of options.
The current limitation of LCA is that it is usually focused just on the issues involved with environmental sustainability.  However, there are ongoing efforts to incorporate social sustainability elements as well as economic sustainability components.  These are early days for the full use of LCA but it is a tool that offers a great deal of promise.