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Life Cycle Assessment ( Lca )

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique used to quantify environmental outcomes- energy, materials used, and released wastes- assignable to a product. It assesses the environmental impacts of their supply chain activities as a whole. By looking at the full picture of the activities, a firm such as Procter and Gamble (P&G) could view the environmental tradeoffs of product innovation. In efforts to sustain competitive advantage with their popular-selling item, disposable diapers, the use of LCA aides in making decisions for producing greener products for its customers, and to reduce environmental footprint. The public is becoming widely concerned with the products effects on resources and the environment. “These effects occur at every stage in a product’s life cycle-from the extraction of the raw materials from the ground through the processing, manufacturing, and transportation phases, ending with use and disposal or recycling” (Le-van,1995, p.7,). The present study aims to evaluate the life cycle system of disposable diapers in efforts to assign understanding of the sustainability benefits of Life Cycle Assessment.
An LCA-measured environmental improvements analysis in Pampers® diapers reported that, “the sourcing and production of diaper materials contribute most to the environmental indicators evaluated, accounting for ∼84% of all non-renewable energy uses and ∼64% of global warming potential” (Weisbrod and Hoof,2011). The sustainable development study used LCA to

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