The objective of this training is to provide an understanding of the scope of life cycle assessment (LCA) (information generated and potential applications) in order to strategically integrate it into a decision-making process. Elements presented: life cycle concept, stages of an LCA according to ISO 14 040 and concrete examples of companies that have integrated life cycle thinking into their practices.

The challenge of social LCA is to identify the potential social impacts arising from the activities of companies involved in the value chain of a product or service, to their stakeholders. More and more public or private decision-makers wish to better understand the consequences of their decisions and to identify avenues for continuous improvement, it therefore appears necessary to also consider the social effects of the choices made (type of investment, choice of suppliers, income distribution, etc.).

This course deals with the water footprint based on life cycle analysis, as defined in the ISO 14 046 standard. The implementation of sustainable water management involves the identification of impacts. of human activity and the determination of possible levers of action: this is the goal of the water footprint. The water footprint quantifies the potential impacts associated with water, both in terms of water quality and quantity.

In order to meet the challenge of climate change, companies will need to create low-carbon products and services and reduce the carbon footprint of their operations. This training aims to highlight exactly what the carbon footprint is, how to measure it and its role in the fight against climate change.

The ecoinvent v3 database is significantly different in many ways from older ecoinvent databases and other databases on the market. Also, ecoinvent v3 contains several datasets specific to the Quebec context, from the Quebec Life Cycle Inventory database project. The goal of the training is to allow a customer already able to perform LCAs to understand how ecoinvent v3 works.

With the growing interest of organizations in the concept of circular economy, many strategies are put forward to improve the circularity of products or services. But what are the environmental benefits or impacts of these strategies? Is it always better to close the loop? How can the circular economy be anchored more concretely in a context of sustainability? Life cycle thinking, and one of its tools, life cycle assessment, can provide answers to these questions.

The development of more sustainable infrastructure is at the heart of our societies’ objectives, as outlined for example in goals 9 and 11 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this context, more and more building certifications such as LEEDv4 or the zero-carbon building standard are based on life cycle thinking for some of their evaluation criteria. Such an approach notably allows a better distinction between the potential environmental or social impacts of a building according to the different stages of its life cycle, in particular the distinction between intrinsic and operational impacts. It thus makes it possible to promote more informed decision-making, whether in the design of a building or its renovation.

As an LCA practitioner, it is sometimes difficult to navigate the different impact methods available and to know how to interpret them. The purpose of this training is to demystify the impact assessment and interpretation phases of LCA in order to better understand how to use the different impact methods and interpret them appropriately. The training takes a practical perspective (not the impact method developer’s perspective) based on the use of the IMPACT World+ regionalized impact methodology.