Breaking Free from Linear Thinking: Life Cycle Assessment and Circular Economy Posted December 13, 2017 by Julie Sinistore A key theme of the 2017 American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) conference was the need to incorporate circular economy into design principles. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can help identify the areas of a product’s life cycle essential to promoting a circular economy. This appears to be a logical application of LCA principles because, in LCA, the life cycle of a product is often presented as circular like the diagram to the right. The problem is that this life cycle is not actually circular, it’s linear, and is more accurately depicted like the below: The current way of thinking about product life cycles is fundamentally linear because there is a raw material extraction phase, a production phase, a use phase and an end-of-life phase. If a life cycle was truly circular, there would be no end-of-life. If there is “final disposal” of a product, such as in a landfill Read More
