Define Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) as evaluations carried out to assess the environmental impact of a product across its entire lifespan.
Describe the key stages analysed in an LCA: extracting and processing raw materials, manufacturing and packaging, use and operation during its lifetime, and disposal at the end of its useful life (including transport and distribution at each stage).
Understand that while the use of water, resources, energy sources, and production of some wastes can be easily quantified, allocating numerical values to pollutant effects is less straightforward.
Explain why LCAs are not purely objective processes, as they require subjective value judgements for complex environmental impacts.
Recognise that selective or abbreviated LCAs can be devised to evaluate products but may be misused to support pre-determined conclusions, such as in biased advertising claims.
Carry out and analyse simple comparative LCAs for common items, such as shopping bags made from plastic versus paper.
