Pressure for LCA

This week’s question is: Through what boundary conditions or external control can the government increase the use of LCA? Let’s start with the external control. Although this is not the perfect way of handling thing, since rules have to be monitored and sanctioned, it is a very direct way of enforcing things. The government could set a rule like this: before a product enters the market, a full LCA needs to be executed on this product. This is not the rule that will be in the law books, a perfect, non bypassable rule will need to be made by the administration of the government. But this is not the only task the administration will be granted, the monitoring and sanctioning will also come under their care. It is difficult to imagine how such a monitoring system would work. Because of the sheer amount of products that exist, the workload will be enormous. There would need to be some trust relationship between a governing instance (maybe the Kamer van Koophandel), and the company producing products of which a LCA needs to be made. Producers would have to report their LCA findings to the governing instance themselves; otherwise I think this form of external control is not maintainable. 

By setting boundary conditions, the government reduces the workload because the amount of monitoring and sanctioning is in this case mostly not required. There are different types of boundaries the government can set. She can alter market conditions, through either taxes or subsidies. The government can also alter the available information, by for example advertisements or setting ‘best practices’ (commercial or professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective) but also by censoring/propaganda. A last option is alter physical conditions, e.g. roads, borders, etc., but this is less applicable in the case of increasing the use of LCAs. 

The first one I will analyse is altering market conditions. I think the best way to apply this here is through a tax on products that have not had a LCA. This way, products with a LCA get privileges over ones that have not had a LCA done, since they can be cheaper. Customers will be more likely to buy cheaper products, meaning companies that have not done a LCA on their products, will see their income decrease. This way you can also ‘force’ companies to prove the government an analysis has been done for their products; there is no need for a trust relationship, as was the case for the external control. Moreover, the system of taxing already exists in the form of VAT; hence the administration will likely not have to deal with more work. However, there is a chance that all companies will refuse to pay for a life-cycle analysis to be done for their products, which means the bill ends up with the customer. This outcome is not the intention of such a tax, but is a possible outcome, so perhaps not the best way to increase the use of LCA.

The next possible boundary condition I would like to analyse is altering the available information. In my opinion, this is a promising tool for this case. If the government were to set LCAs as ‘best practice’, and creates an instance that hands out labels, saying a LCA has been performed on certain articles. Customers would gain another measure to judge products, which can alter their buying behaviour. I think this could increase the use of LCA, but still gives a choice to companies and customers, and choice equals freedom. However, this will not maximize the use of LCA, since there are costs to LCA, and I think many companies will take their chances, and hope that the customer chooses for the cheapest product. After all, costs for LCA will eventually end up in the price of the product, but that is always the case, except if the government themselves finances LCAs for products, which is another option for setting boundary conditions. 

To conclude the post, I think depending on the desired amount of LCAs being used, one of the above examples could be chosen as policy.