Critical Analysis on the Limitations of the Diffusion of Life Cycle Assessment

Obtaining a quantification of the environmental impacts of its products is now necessary for a company for several reasons, e.g. planning eco-design interventions, enhancing marketing aspects, obtaining a certification for trade. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the best known and most appreciated methodologies to support this, however its application in the most useful way for the many purposes that may exist at an environmental level struggles to establish itself in companies. To understand how to improve the application of the LCA, this paper systematically analyzes and classifies the many problems identified during research activities on the subject in various companies from 2010 to today by the same authors. Compared to other approaches in the literature, in this case, the database is much larger and heterogeneous and the authors have full knowledge of it, having personally contributed to creating it. The result is a set of problems on the application of LCA, divided into different classes: motivations, inventory, impacts calculation, interpretation of the results. Finally, a set of strategies of intervention were proposed by the same authors to limit these problems.