One of the downsides of LCA is that LCA results are difficult to interpret for those sustainability practitioners who aren’t specialised in LCA, but do rely on it on the battlefield. That’s why the LCA community has been striving so hard to find consensus and decide on standardisation, aiming to make LCA more efficient and easier to interpret. An important initiative is the Flagship 1b project of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, which aims to build global consensus and guidance. This article shows the exciting progress so far.

A water footprint is a measure of how much water your business uses and which direct and indirect environmental impacts result from this. It can help you understand and manage your water use and even protect your company from physical, regulatory, and reputation risks. But how does it work and how is it calculated in SimaPro?

This is the first in a series of articles where PRé's consultants explain a step in the LCA process and how their expertise fits into that step. First up is Laura Golsteijn, who is not just an expert on characterization in LCIA, but also earned a PhD based on her original characterization research.

One of the goals of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Initiative is to offer a standard for impact assessment, so it is easier and more meaningful to compare products. This is the story of how the initiative chose its recommended set of methods from among the huge number of available options.

PRESS RELEASE | The ORIENTING project identifies promising methods and tools for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment after a first phase of analysis and assessment.

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a field of active development. The last decade has seen prolific publication of new impact assessment methods covering many different impact categories and providing characterization factors that often deviate from each other for the same substance and impact. Here you can read the journey towards identifying the best existing practice for characterization modeling in life cycle impact assessment.

To make LCA results count, it’s important to consider your audience. Not only when choosing the topic of your study or writing your conclusions, but also when you select your impact assessment method.

This is the second in a series of articles where PRé's own consultants explain a step in the LCIA process and the way their own expertise fits into that step. Tommie Ponsioen is a technical consultant at PRé, with expertise in LCA methodology and database development. This article explains normalisation, the third step in LCIA, and describes new developments in the field.

It’s been a while since we last demystified an obscure impact category. This time, the spotlight is on ecotoxicity, mostly in aquatic ecosystems. How do methodologies in life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) help us to understand how ecotoxicity acts within the environment? And why does it matter?