From Goods to Services: The Life Cycle Assessment Perspective

Abstract

The traditional good dominant logic framework was recently replaced by a service dominant logic. This shift requires also different perspective on life cycle assessment (LCA), from the definition of the value of the process to be analyzed and thus the reference scenario, to the measures to be generated in order to accurately and reliably present the environmental, social and economic impacts. Moreover, it requires to interpret differently the input-output inventory of physical resources of materials and energies, but also to stress the importance of assessing non-physical resources like effort and knowledge. In general, moving from a good to a service or a product-service system, changes the focus from production to usage, identifying by different alternatives, which dematerialize the demand by servicizing. In addition, servicizing increases the level of the life cycle’s value, where eventually the customer could be turned into a provider and reduce the environmental impacts. In service based LCA perspective, the joint value co-creation and the customer behavior are the main drivers of the LCA impacts due to the promotion of a general functional unit that fulfill the need. Three cases of study are used as examples to apply LCA to the transition from goods to services.