Comparing LCA results out of competing products: developing reference ranges from a product family approach

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has proven useful in comparing the environmental impact of alternatives, life-cycle phases or parts in a product. To date, benchmarking a new product with previous environmental information entails a degree of subjectivity. This paper presents LCP-families, a concept to develop reference ranges for environmental impact of a new product. A new product can be catalogued as environmentally better or worse than a percentage of its competitors, depending on what position it occupies in its LCP-family. Three case studies of packaging products are carried out to show the applicability and usefulness of the concepts presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.