It is best practice to embed life cycle thinking and assessment into waste management strategy and operations, with steps 1, and 2 (below) being essential and steps 3 to 8 needing an ad-hoc life cycle assessment (LCA) to be carried out and not always necessary:
- Systematic application of life-cycle thinking throughout waste management strategy design and implementation (to complement the waste management hierarchy).
- Review of relevant LCA literature to rank the environmental performance of alternative waste management options, where studied systems are directly comparable with available options.
- Application of LCA to specific management and technology options for which no reliable published literature can be found; this requires procurement of LCA services, or in-house use of relevant LCA software.
- Careful consideration of system boundaries to ensure an accurate comparison across options, including system expansion and/or LCA for avoided processes (e.g. grid electricity generation).
- Compilation and documentation of life-cycle inventories in relation to reference flows, if possible using primary data recorded along the value chain, noting data quality and uncertainty ranges.
- Selection of pertinent impact categories to capture the major environmental burdens.
- Presentation of normalised results for relevant impact categories to evaluate complementarities or trade-offs, with clear indication of uncertainty errors and sensitivity analyses.
- Validation of the LCA study by an independent third party (essential requirement under ISO 14044 for external dissemination of results, but good practice even when only used internally).