Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has a long history. However, the meaning of LCA has changed through time. Initially, and still today, LCAwas a product consideration. Manufacturers were interested in the economic life of their product, be this an incandescent lamp, discharge lamp or LED light source. An extension of this was economic LCA, also called life-cycle costing. Here, the user of the product considered its economic impact on them through life. This balanced capital costs, operating costs and, potentially, additional benefits such as productivity gains to produce the most economically efficient solution using calculations based around well-established financial concepts. Both of these consider the product as always existing. Neither consider the environmental costs in production and disposal of the product. Environmental LCA developed to take these aspects into consideration, covering cradle-tograve impacts, and more recently with the concept of the circular economy cradle-tocradle impacts, where a product is shared, repaired, reused, remanufactured or recycled minimising waste. Standards were developed to help with these assessments, allowing meaningful declarations. Frequently, however, these LCA consider quantity of materials used without considering the scarcity of the materials. The next challenge being addressed is to link economic and environmental LCA to produce a comprehensive assessment, and for politicians and leaders to ensure this becomes a real consideration in consumer decisions. The European Commission Mandate M/543 to develop generic standards related to material efficiency aspects, such as recyclability, recoverability/reusability, durability, reversible disassembly and end of life extraction time, is a step towards this. When we can measure, we can evaluate. And when we can evaluate, we can make informed choices.

中文翻译：

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社论：做出明智的选择

生命周期评估 (LCA) 有着悠久的历史。但是，LCA 的含义随着时间而改变。最初，直到今天，LCA 还是一种产品考虑因素。制造商对其产品的经济寿命感兴趣，无论是白炽灯、放电灯还是 LED 光源。对此的扩展是经济 LCA，也称为生命周期成本。在这里，产品的用户考虑了它对他们一生的经济影响。这平衡了资本成本、运营成本以及潜在的额外收益，例如生产力提高，以使用基于完善的财务概念的计算来产生最经济高效的解决方案。这两者都认为产品始终存在。也不考虑产品生产和处置过程中的环境成本。环境 LCA 的发展考虑了这些方面，涵盖了从摇篮到坟墓的影响，以及最近的循环经济从摇篮到摇篮影响的概念，其中产品被共享、修复、再利用、再制造或回收，最大限度地减少浪费。制定标准是为了帮助这些评估，允许有意义的声明。然而，这些 LCA 通常会考虑所用材料的数量，而不考虑材料的稀缺性。下一个正在解决的挑战是将经济和环境 LCA 联系起来以进行综合评估，并让政治家和领导人确保这成为消费者决策中的真正考虑因素。欧盟委员会授权 M/543 制定与材料效率方面相关的通用标准，例如可回收性、可回收性/可重用性、耐用性、可逆拆卸和使用寿命结束提取时间，是朝着这一目标迈出的一步。当我们可以衡量时，我们就可以评估。当我们可以评估时，我们就可以做出明智的选择。