Life Cycle Association of New Zealand

Life Cycle Thinking is an environmental management approach based on taking a holistic whole life cycle approach to product and service systems. A whole life cycle approach extends from raw materials extraction and processing through to product manufacture, delivery, use, and finally on to waste management and recycling. This is often referred to as a “cradle to grave” or a “cradle to cradle” approach. The advantage of Life Cycle Thinking is that strategies for environmental improvement, may integrate strategies for consumption, production as well as end of life, therefore preventing a piecemeal approach. Taking a life cycle approach also avoids improving environmental impacts at one stage of the life cycle, but unintentionally creating environmental impacts in another stage of the life cycle, or shifting impacts from one geographic area to another, or from one environmental medium to another, so called “problem shifting”. Life Cycle Thinking refers to the mainly qualitative concept of identifying the stages of the life cycle and/or the potential environmental impacts of greatest significance. This can be used in early stages of a design brief or in an introductory discussion of policy measures. Following a qualitative Life Cycle Thinking, a quantitative approach such as Life Cycle Assessment could then be used to further investigate, or substantiate the findings from Life Cycle Thinking. For example of life cycle thinking see “Why take a life cycle approach”: http://lcinitiative.unep.fr/includes/file.asp?site=lcinit&file=B4287A36-ED08-43D3-A9A0-5CA916AB59C6