The Life Cycle Initiative has concluded another busy and fruitful year. During 2018, the Initiative continued implementing its strategy by launching projects in each of three programme areas. We delivered a comprehensive project portfolio to realise our mission and vision, that is, to support global sustainable decision making for both the public and the private sectors. The Initiative has been active in providing technical advice for specific sectors (tourism, plastics, chemicals, and textile etc.), policy themes (national hotspots and footprints, measuring the progressive achievement of sustainable development goals for business), as well as developing life cycle capacity and fundamental life cycle knowledge on (both environmental and social) impact indicators and interoperable data.

The Initiative’s membership showed steady growth, and we received the support from two new funding partners: Braskem and The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment. Numerous Life Cycle Initiative members met during the Initiative’s virtual 2nd General Assembly in September 2018, and 3 rotating Steering Committee seats were elected. We established a very effective and dynamic decision-making process with the Steering Committee, with more transparency to members.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank all steering committee members for their dedication to make decisions for the Initiative; all project leaders for their hard work to implement the Initiative’s activities, as well as the continuing support from the Initiative’s members and the life cycle community, to contribute to and disseminate the outcomes of our collective hard work.

In 2019, we will continue to meet the challenges of the global sustainability agenda by providing technical support, capacity and knowledge to facilitate a broader application of life cycle thinking. We look forward to delivering encouraging results from our scaled-up activities, engagement with high-level policy processes (such as the 4th Session of the UN Environment Assembly — see article below), as well as strengthening interactions with our members and users of life cycle knowledge.