Why LCA and ESG need each other

ESG reporting describes a company: its emissions, governance and social impact. Life cycle assessment describes a product: what it takes to make, move, use and dispose of one unit. For a long time they lived in different departments.

That separation is ending. Company-level carbon reports depend on product and supply chain data, especially for Scope 3. And customers, especially in construction and the EU, increasingly ask for product-level proof through environmental product declarations.

Two directions of the same data

• Top down (ESG): start from the organization, set boundaries by business unit, choose a baseline year, report Scope 1, 2 and 3 under the GHG Protocol.
• Bottom up (LCA): start from one product, define a functional unit, gather inventory data for each life cycle stage, find the hotspots.

When the two meet, the company can say not only how much it emits, but which products and which decisions drive it. That is the moment carbon data becomes useful to product teams.

Why this is a data problem

Both directions need the same raw material, and it is usually missing: supplier data, meter data, material specifications. That is the thread I kept pulling in I went looking for sustainable products and found a data problem.

I wrote the original post to invite people to a first LCA workshop at PNW Climate Week. The workshop write-up covers what came of it.