Ensuring the increasing use of life-cycle approaches is more important than ever. In early April, Llorenç Milà i Canals, Head of the UNEP Life Cycle Initiative, embarked on a mission to Mexico to raise awareness and participate in multi-stakeholder dialogues about the importance of LCAs. He discussed capacity building on the use of life-cycle approaches to plastic pollution solutions during meetings with Mexico’s Ministry of Environment (SEMARNAT) and the City of Mexico’s Department of Environment (SEDEMA) governments. He further delivered a keynote speech in the most important LCA conference in the region, the XI International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in Latin America (CILCA 2025).

SEMARNAT expressed their willingness to engage in technical discussions to provide a strong evidence-based approach to develop regulations rooted in LCA, such as EPR, eco-design, and eco-labelling. SEDEMA highlighted the need to address key obstacles such as behavioural changes and limited human and financial resources to strengthen its environmental activities.

CILCA 2025 was successfully held from April 7th to 11th at the Engineering Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and organized by the Mexican Life Cycle Assessment Network, bringing together a diverse group of participants, including LCA practitioners, researchers, small-scale sustainability entrepreneurs, government decision-makers, and corporate sustainability leaders. A total of 163 attendees (60% women) from 21 countries across Latin America, North America and Europe participated in the conference. In his keynote speech, Llorenç presented UNEP’s views on the use of LCA towards sustainable consumption and production and finance and economic transformation.

UNEP’s contributions to LCA through the Life Cycle Initiative over the past two decades were appreciated and referenced throughout the conference. Eduardo Garza, Director on Sustainable Production and Consumption of Industrial Activities at SEMARNAT, highlighted the importance of LCA in supporting policies. Participants from several countries of the region expressed their willingness to explore UNEP’s potential role in hosting LCA data (e.g. national databases) through the LCA data platform GLAD, acknowledging that GLAD’s role in global architecture for LCA datasets is even more relevant than data. The main conclusions of CILCA 2025 included the importance of anchoring the Circular Economy scenarios in Life Cycle Assessment studies, expanding the scope of LCA methodologies to include region-specific methods and characterization factors for Latin America, advancing the development of national Life Cycle databases, and strengthening partnerships with governments and private sector to promote more sustainable public policies and production-consumption systems.