Life cycle assessment can be defined as “studies the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product’s life from raw material acquisition through production, use, and disposal”. LCA helps to understand true and total cost associated with the manufacture of a product, its use and disposal. Environmental releases to air, water and land from each life cycle stage of a product can be quantified from life cycle assessment.  Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be divided into four phases; Goal and Scope definition, Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Interpretation.

First phase defines the purpose of the assessment, the level of details required, the intended audience and other parameters. Information and data on raw materials consumed, energy used, emission to air and water and waste production at LCI stage that enable to quantify flow of inputs such as materials and energy and output such as emission and wastages.

Environmental impacts such as global warming potential, water use, ozone depletion as a result of the production, is evaluated at LCIA stage. Interpretation is the final stage where inventory and impact assessment results are analysed and interpreted and recommendation to mitigate environmental impacts will be made based on the collected and analysed data.

‘Cradle-to-Grave’ is one of the approaches within LCA framework that assesses the environmental impacts due to the production that includes raw materials (Cradle), manufacturing process, and disposal of the product (‘grave’). However, ‘gate-to-grave’ doesn’t include raw materials extraction and production process and starts at the ‘gate’ or the point when a product leaves the production facility and ends at the ‘gave’ or the disposal. Both approaches can be used to assess the environmental impacts of the product, based on the specific need and objective.