Sustainability evaluation. Innovative tools

Each product or service have an impact on the environment. This impact is determined by each phase of their life cycle, from the production to the consumption and the waste treatment. Moreover, the impacts can be evaluated in terms of consumed resources and damages on environment and human health. To improve the environmental performance of a product or a process, the Plan for Production and Sustainable Consumption (PSC) promotes the use of the Life Cycle Thinking approach. This approach covers all the phases: from the extraction of raw materials, to the design, manufacture, assembly, marketing, distribution, use, sale, up to the final disposal. Furthermore, due to the large number of subjects involved, cannot exist a single methodology or a single approach to evaluate the impacts of a product. Rather than there is a whole variety of tools, both voluntary and mandatory, which can be used to achieve the goal of improving the environmental performance of a product. These tools include Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the Ecologic Footprint, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), the Carbon FootPrint (CFP) and the Water FootPrint (WFP).