Using Life-cycle Assessment for Sustainable Consumption

The 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg called for a comprehensive set of programs focusing on sustainable consumption and production. According to world leaders, these programs should rely on life cycle analysis (LCA) to promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Cleaner production is a wellestablished activity and it uses LCA. UNEP, the European Union, and a number of national organizations have now begun to work on sustainable consumption. In developing sustainable consumption policies and activities, the use of LCA presents interesting opportunities which are not yet well understood by policy makers. This paper outlines how life cycle approaches can be used in the area of sustainable consumption, to inform policy making, select areas of action, identify which lifestyles are more sustainable, advise consumers, and evaluate the effectiveness of sustainable consumption measures. The investigations necessary need to go beyond product life-cycle assessments and integrate LCA with input-output analysis, consumer expenditure surveys, time-use studies and panel methods. This paper describes for the use of LCA in the form of simple matrix equations and then discusses the current state-ofthe-art. These approaches still need to be developed and tested and require additional efforts to collect data. Current research is mostly descriptive; policy makers, however, require more strategic analysis addressing their decision options.