Crade to Gate or Cradle to Grave

Hi Christine, yes I believe there's an advantage to addressing the full product life cycle but from a practical standpoint my understanding is that manufacturers typically limit the LCA boundaries to cradle to gate (i.e., when the product leaves the factory) because there are so many variables beyond that point - shipping distance, installation, maintenance, repair or replacement, disposal or recycling, etc. Also for consistency the ISO standards that govern LCA's may dictate the system boundaries. You might want to check ISO 14040 and 14044. (caveat: I'm not an LCA expert)

Definitely agree with Craig! Manufacturers have a lot more control over their own processes. Understanding, predicting, and making assumptions about the use phase of building products is quite complicated. For a product like food, looking cradle to grave is much simpler: it gets shipped to specific stores, gets eaten, with the packaging thrown away or recycled within a fairly short time period. With a building product, the functional performance is much more complex. How do you model the environmental impact of the use phase of insulation? When there are thousands of different climates and you know nothing about the rest of the building, like what fuel the HVAC burns? It's quite difficult and involves a HUGE number of assumptions and back-of-the-envelope projections, and that's why most LCAs look cradle to gate. Hope this helps! (Also not an LCA expert!)