Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA, is an important tool in the EMS of a company. ISO 14000 is a certified EMS system. The major purpose of using an LCA is that LCA applied in the EMS of an organization provides the organization with a stronger insight into environmental problems than the organizations which are not using the LCA. Using the LCA in the EMS of a company helps in the identification of both progressions related to EMS and discarding related EMS. Also, it helps in focusing a hierarchy of the environmental problems that should first be upon the process-based, then the supplier based and finally the use and disposal-based.
The rank of those companies that process using LCA is always higher than those companies which do not use LCA in the EMS. Many companies in different countries are now adopting the LCA in the EMS system for better business. For e.g. “in Switzerland, 57% of the companies use LCA for the identification of bottlenecks and the information and education of consumers and stakeholders. 45% of the companies say they apply LCA to compare existing products and possible alternatives”.
Previously there was no clear correspondence between the LCA and EMS systems like the ISO 14000. The use of LCA in the EMS is very good for companies because it helps in the maintenance of the organizational structure, the practices, procedures, and processes of a company which get strengthened, and it also helps in the maintenance of the environmental policies of the organization. The use of LCA in the EMS also helps in the inventory analysis. Thus LCA provides strong support to the EMS system such as ISO 14000 so that companies can better supplier-related and user-based problems.