2017 has been particularly exciting and eventful here at the Life Cycle Initiative! We concluded Phase 3 (2012-2017) and launched our new strategy, with the main objective to scale up the Initiative’s activities with a more ambitious linkage to global policies and business agendas, under a more transparent and open governance structure.
Phase 3 of the Initiative successfully concluded with the following outputs added in 2017:
• The first e-learning module on Introduction to Life Cycle Thinking, available both in English and Spanish, has attracted close to 1000 subscribers within 4 months’ time;
• After being pilot-tested by 12 organizations worldwide, fresh results of using the organisational LCA guidance have been published;
• A series of publications have been produced related to review of LCA datasets and management of databases;
• The overarching methodology framework of hotspots analysis and communication guidelines have been released.
All these deliverables build on the extraordinary commitment of the many partners of the Life Cycle Initiative, who lend their time and expertise to the common objectives of the Initiative, as project co-chairs, expert contributors to reviews, road-testers in industry and the public sector, disseminators of the work of the Initiative, and providing insights into the strategic direction of the Life Cycle Initiative to deliver on the huge ambition of making life cycle thinking common-place globally… To all of you, a massive thank you as we turn another page; we look forward to continuing on this collaboration, the work is far from over!
A new and exciting phase for the Life Cycle Initiative began over the summer, with a successful virtual General Assembly in September 2017 where a new Steering Committee was elected. We currently have close to 250 members across 46 countries across business, government and science/civil society constituencies. For more details on our members please click here. Two new projects have been launched applying life cycle thinking for supporting decision making, on national hotspots analysis and marine plastics respectively.
As we begin 2018, the Life Cycle Initiative is going from strength to strength to launch a series of new and impactful projects delivering into our three overarching programmes. We are looking forward to a wide collaboration with all members through such activities, and we also welcome new organisations and individuals to jointly develop life cycle knowledge, capacity, and implementation into global decision making.
