Life cycle assessment is the discipline that measures the environmental impact of a product or service across its entire existence, from raw material extraction to end of life. For a business, a life cycle assessment turns vague sustainability ambitions into verifiable numbers: it reveals where emissions, water use and waste actually concentrate, and it underpins the evidence-based claims that regulators and buyers now demand [1]. Once confined to research laboratories, the method has become an operational tool for procurement, product and sustainability teams. This article explains the methodology behind life cycle assessment, the standards that govern it, the software that runs it, and how organisations across sectors, including audiovisual production, put it to work.
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What life cycle assessment means for a business
A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a structured method for quantifying the environmental burdens associated with a product, process or service across every stage of its life [2]. Rather than looking only at a factory gate or a single emission source, it follows the value chain from resource extraction, through manufacturing and use, to disposal or recycling. This “cradle-to-grave” perspective is what gives the method its value for decision making: it prevents burden shifting, the trap of solving a problem in one stage while quietly worsening it in another [5].
For a company, the business case rests on three uses. First, LCA identifies environmental hotspots, so investment targets the stages that matter most instead of the most visible ones. Second, it supplies the primary data behind product declarations and carbon labels that customers and tenders increasingly require. Third, it feeds regulatory reporting, from ecodesign rules to corporate sustainability disclosure. Firms are now expected to shift from estimated averages to primary supplier data and to provide documented, auditable methodology [3]. That shift is precisely what a rigorous life cycle assessment delivers.
The scope of an assessment can be narrowed when the question allows it. A “cradle-to-gate” study stops at the factory exit and suits intermediate materials, while “cradle-to-cradle” extends the boundary to include recycling back into new products. Choosing the right boundary is a strategic decision, not a technical footnote, and it is closely tied to the way a company frames its greenhouse gas accounting.
The four phases of a life cycle assessment
The method is codified by two international standards. ISO 14040 sets the principles and framework (the what and the why), while ISO 14044 details the requirements and guidelines (the how) [1]. Together they define a four-phase process that any credible study follows.
| Phase | What happens | Key business decision |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Goal and scope definition | The purpose, audience and application are set, along with the system function, the functional unit and the system boundaries. | Defining the functional unit fixes what is compared and excluded, so it shapes every downstream result. |
| 2. Life cycle inventory (LCI) | All inputs (energy, materials) and outputs (products, emissions, waste) are recorded across the boundary. | The quality of primary supplier data determines how defensible the final figures are. |
| 3. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) | Inventory data is translated into impact categories such as global warming, water use, acidification and resource depletion. | Selecting impact categories decides which trade-offs the business can see and manage. |
| 4. Interpretation | Results are checked for consistency, sensitivity and completeness, then turned into conclusions and recommendations. | Interpretation is where hotspots become an action plan rather than a report. |
The functional unit deserves particular attention because it anchors the whole study. It describes the function a product provides and the reference flow needed to deliver it, and it directly governs whether the boundary is set at the gate, the grave or a full loop [6]. A poorly chosen functional unit makes two assessments impossible to compare; a well chosen one lets a business benchmark options on a like-for-like basis and pinpoint carbon hotspots across its supply chain [6].
From assessment to EPD, PCF and carbon labels
A life cycle assessment is rarely the end product. It is the engine that powers the documents a business actually communicates. The most common outputs are the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) and the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
A PCF isolates one impact category, greenhouse gas emissions, and captures them from cradle to grave, typically expressed as Global Warming Potential in kilograms of CO2-equivalent [7]. An EPD goes further: it is a standardised, third-party-verified report that communicates multiple environmental impacts of a product based on an underlying LCA [7]. Where a PCF answers “what is the carbon number”, an EPD answers “what is the full environmental profile, independently checked”. Buyers, construction specifiers and public tenders increasingly ask for one or both.
These outputs also connect a product-level study to an organisation-level inventory. Emissions calculated through LCA feed the value-chain categories of a corporate footprint, which is why life cycle thinking and sustainability reporting software are converging in practice. The regulatory direction reinforces this: the EU Digital Product Passport now requires verified, product-level environmental data, starting with batteries and extending to textiles and electronics [3].
Life cycle assessment software and tools
Running an LCA by hand is impractical for anything but the simplest system, because it requires large inventory databases and impact models. Specialised software has therefore become central to the discipline, and adoption is growing as ecodesign rules and product-level disclosure move into core operations. The North American LCA software market is valued at around USD 84 million, roughly a third of global revenue, with Europe close behind [3].
A systematic review of the field found that five tools stand out for their frequency of use: SimaPro, GaBi, OpenLCA, Umberto and Athena [4]. A newer generation of platforms adds automation and artificial intelligence to speed up data collection, aiming to make product carbon footprints accessible to companies without a dedicated LCA team [10].
| Tool type | Typical strength | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Established LCA suites (SimaPro, GaBi, Umberto) | Deep impact databases and detailed modelling control. | Expert practitioners and complex, high-stakes studies. |
| Open-source (OpenLCA) | No licence cost, flexible and transparent. | Research teams and organisations building internal capability. |
| Sector databases (Athena) | Ready-made data for a specific industry. | Construction and materials-heavy applications. |
| AI-assisted platforms | Automated data capture and faster footprints. | Companies scaling many products without in-house LCA staff. |
There is no single best tool. Selection depends on the goal, the sector, the level of data granularity required and the internal expertise available [4]. For most businesses, the deciding factor is not the modelling engine but how efficiently the platform collects reliable primary data, which is where the traditionally time-intensive part of the work sits. Choosing the right production and reporting platform is therefore as much an operational question as a scientific one.
Life cycle assessment in audiovisual production and live events
The media and entertainment sector illustrates why life cycle thinking matters beyond manufacturing. A film, series or live event is not a single product but a temporary supply chain assembled and dismantled in weeks, drawing on energy, transport, equipment, sets, costumes and catering. Applying an LCA lens means following the impact of raw materials and equipment from extraction through production, use and disposal, so producers can make informed choices rather than symbolic ones [9].
Film and television productions
Large-scale productions consume substantial energy to power lighting, cameras and on-set equipment. Research measuring the carbon footprint across the full production life cycle found that tentpole productions average around 3,370 metric tonnes of CO2-equivalent, with fuel burned in production vehicles and generators forming the single largest contribution, close to half of the total [8]. A life cycle view exposes where those emissions sit: not in the visible camera department but in transport, temporary power and the upstream manufacture of sets and props. Practical responses observed across studios include reusing equipment, sourcing second-hand costumes, and running partly renewable-powered offices [9]. Mapping these against the emission scopes of an audiovisual production shows most of the impact falls into indirect, value-chain categories.
Live events
Events face a parallel challenge: temporary power on site, audience and crew mobility, local suppliers, waste and overnight stays. Because the structure is built and removed quickly, life cycle assessment is well suited to capturing impacts that a single-day measurement would miss, from the manufacture of staging to the disposal of single-use materials. The recurring lesson across both film and events, documented in studies of production studios, is that carbon calculators tailored to the sector are still maturing and work best when grounded in genuine primary data rather than generic averages.
GreenPro, the carbon tracking tool from TheGreenshot, automates the collection of this data for productions and events. It turns production expenditure into activity data and certified footprints aligned with Albert, Ecoprod, the GHG Protocol and CSRD, without manual entry. Global groups already rely on it: Banijay Entertainment consolidates greenhouse gas accounting across more than 130 creative entities through the platform. Learn more about GreenPro
Conclusion
Life cycle assessment has moved from academic method to business infrastructure. By following a product or service from cradle to grave through the four phases set out in ISO 14040 and 14044, it converts environmental ambition into defensible data, powering the EPDs, carbon footprints and disclosures that markets and regulators now expect. The tooling has matured in parallel, from expert suites to AI-assisted platforms that widen access. For any organisation, including those in audiovisual production and live events, the value of a life cycle assessment lies less in the report itself than in the decisions it makes possible: knowing exactly where impact concentrates, and acting on it. As product-level regulation such as the Digital Product Passport expands, life cycle thinking is set to become a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator.
FAQ
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Going further with TheGreenshot
Every life cycle assessment lives or dies on the quality of its inventory data, and in production environments that data is scattered across invoices, suppliers and departments. GreenPro, the carbon tracking platform from TheGreenshot, closes that gap. It uses OCR invoice scanning and AI categorisation to turn production expenditure into reliable activity data, then converts it into certified footprints aligned with Albert, Ecoprod, the GHG Protocol and CSRD, with real-time dashboards and no manual entry. For teams that want life cycle thinking to inform daily decisions rather than an annual report, it removes the operational burden that usually holds LCA back. A short walkthrough is the easiest way to see how it fits an existing workflow.
Our carbon experts help production studios frame strategy, train teams and track results, tailored to operational constraints.
