Happy and healthy new year to the Life Cycle Community! We are excited to welcome 2023 with a renewed sense of purpose. 

2022 was a landmark year for the Life Cycle Initiative, as we celebrated our 20th anniversary and received unprecedented attention to mainstream life-cycle thinking at the global policy arena.

The year saw a strong push for life-cycle approaches in UNEA5, particularly in the area of mitigating plastic pollution. We have continued delivering the request from member states for LCA studies comparing single-use plastic products and their alternatives. 2022 saw the release of “Single-use face masks and their alternatives: Recommendations from Life Cycle Assessments” and “Single-use supermarket food packaging and its alternatives: Recommendations from Life Cycle Assessments”, which highlight the role of the Initiative in supporting science based policy-making. And as always, we continued enhancing the enabling conditions for life-cycle approaches to be used globally.

In 2022, we released the report on the nine pilot projects on Social LCA, advanced significantly in providing policy support in the areas of national environmental footprints (SCP-HAT) with a new supply chain module, co-hosted a side event with Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction: ‘Pathways to Sustainable Markets through credible, comparable Lifecycle-based information’ in COP27, and supported the first session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee (INC), just to name a few. In addition, over 1415 learners completed the e-learning courses offered by the Life Cycle Initiative in 2022, with a 13% increase from the number of learners in 2021.

The Life Cycle community is fiercely passionate and engaged and it is this passion that allows the Initiative to continue meeting its goals and reaching higher- bringing life-cycle thinking to the forefront of conversations in both businesses and in policymaking. We need your support to continue strengthening our collaboration with relevant organizations, networks, and individuals, in 2023.

The above is just a small glimpse into the work of the Life Cycle Initiative in 2022. With the opening up of economies, we strive to continue our work and deepen our impact, aiming to provide countries with information on their key hotspots of unsustainable consumption and production, so post-recovery development can symbolize the beginning of a new, more sustainable economy. Don’t forget to stay up to date with us and our work at the Life Cycle Initiative website.