ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards explained

With increasing pressure from regulators and stakeholders like customers to show measurable progress on sustainability commitments, Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) have become a vital tool for businesses. However, the quality of an LCA matters and not all LCAs are equal. The gold standard for robust and trustworthy LCAs are those that comply with ISO 14040 and 14044 standards.

In this blog, we’ll explore what the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards are, why they are so important, how they interact with other LCA standards and how they make sure that LCAs are accurate and credible.

PUBLISHED: 19 November 2024

WRITTEN BY: Charlie Walter

Table of contents

What are the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards?

Think of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a magnifying glass that allows you to examine a product’s environmental footprint throughout its life cycle – from the extraction of raw materials to its final disposal. But how do you make sure your LCA is robust and credible? That’s where ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 come in. These internationally recognised guidelines are the gold standard for conducting LCAs and are essential for creating LCAs that stakeholders can trust.

  • ISO 14040: This standard provides the foundational principles and framework for LCAs. It defines what a product life cycle is and provides high-level guidelines for each phase of the LCA process, from setting goals and deciding the study’s scope to interpreting the results. Consider ISO 14040 as the backbone of the LCA process, ensuring a consistent approach.
  • ISO 14044: Building on ISO 14040, this standard deep dives into how to conduct an LCA, with detailed guidance for implementing each step of an LCA. It has criteria for topics including data quality, impact categories and how to report results which makes sure the LCAs are credible and reliable.

Together, these standards serve as a comprehensive guidebook on how to conduct robust LCAs. They are intentionally broad to ensure they are applicable across all sectors and they connect with other LCA standards tailored to specific purposes, such as using the LCA data to measure product carbon footprints. We dive into this later in the blog.

While ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 are voluntary, following them improves the accuracy and credibility of your LCA. Third-party verification, although not mandatory, is strongly recommended. This independent review confirms that your data collection, assessment methods and interpretation meet ISO standards, which helps build stakeholder trust and reduce the risk of greenwashing.

Why are the ISO 14040 / 14044 standards so important?

The short answer? They make your LCAs bulletproof. 

Here’s how these standards accelerate your sustainability strategy:

Builds trust with stakeholders

ISO 14040 and 14044 provide a clear and consistent framework so they make sure your LCA results are accurate, transparent and comparable. This standardisation builds trust with stakeholders as it enables reliable product comparisons and helps reduce inconsistencies in reporting. These standards are your ultimate quality check, ensuring your LCAs are robust and aligned with global best practices.

Future-proofs your business

As sustainability regulations become more demanding, having LCAs that adhere to ISO 14040 and 14044 guarantees accurate, reliable data for reporting. This helps you avoid non-compliance which can lead to fines, reputational damage and loss of stakeholder trust.

Avoids greenwashing

Greenwashing is a hot topic in the sustainability world, as seen by the introduction of the Green Claims Directive. ISO-aligned LCAs empower your marketing teams with robust data, allowing them to confidently promote your products’ sustainability benefits, make compliant green claims and protect your brand from greenwashing accusations.

Improves supply chain transparency

Supply chain transparency is a crucial component of any robust sustainability strategy. The ISO 14040 and 14044 standards provide detailed guidelines on measuring your product’s environmental impact throughout its life cycle (including its supply chain) and offer guidance on gathering information about your supplier’s environmental performance. By conducting LCAs that adhere to these standards, you ensure your understanding of your supply chains is comprehensive and accurate.

How do ISO 14040 / 14044 connect with other LCA standards?

Visualization of how do ISO 14040 and 14044 connect with other LCA standards

ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 are the foundation of a broader ecosystem of LCA-related standards. 

ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards provide the foundational principles, framework and guidelines for conducting LCAs. Building on these foundational standards are application-standard ISO standards that require LCAs to adhere to the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards and provide guidance for specific applications of the LCA, such as creating Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Lastly, there are Product Category Rules which provide detailed, sector-specific instructions for conducting LCAs to make sure the LCAs are relevant to industry-specific needs.

Using the foundational ISO standards, application-specific ISO standards, and Product Category Rules (where applicable) helps ensure that your LCAs are robust, consistent, and tailored to your specific industry needs. 

Below are the key application-specific standards that expand off ISO 14040 and ISO 14044:

  • ISO 14067 (Carbon footprint of products): Provides guidance on using LCA data to measure a product’s carbon footprint, including the often tricky to measure and reduce scope 3 emissions.
  • ISO 14025 (Environmental Product Declarations): Offers a framework for using LCA data to create Environmental Product Declarations.
  • ISO 14064 (Greenhouse Gas Accounting): Focuses on how to use LCA data to quantify, monitor and report organisational (scope 1 and 2) and product level (scope 3) emissions.
  • ISO 14068 (Carbon Neutrality): Provides guidance on using LCA data to achieve carbon neutrality by reducing emissions and implementing offsetting strategies.

The ISO 14040 / 14044 framework – product life cycle

So, how do the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards make sure LCAs are accurate and trustworthy? 

One way is that these standards define the key stages of a product’s life cycle.  By following ISO 14040 and 14044’s definition of a product life cycle, you can be confident your LCAs are thorough and leave no blind spots.

According to ISO 14040 and 14044, there are five key stages in a product’s life cycle:

  1. Extraction and pre-processing of materials: Gathering the raw materials needed to produce a product. Key impacts include resource depletion, energy use and land degradation.
  2. Processing and manufacturing of products: Converting raw materials into finished products. This stage is often energy-intensive and generates waste.
  3. Distribution from suppliers and to consumers: Moving materials, semi-finished goods and final products across the supply chain. Key impacts include emissions from fuel use.
  4. Usage of products: The phase where consumers use the product.
  5. What happens after products have been used: The product’s end-of-life stage, whether it’s disposed of or recycled once used.
five stages to a product's life cycle

The ISO 14040 / 14044 framework: conducting an LCA

Another key way ISO 14040 and 14044 ensure your LCAs are credible is by providing a detailed framework for how to conduct an LCA. Adhering to the steps outlined in these standards guarantees that your LCA is robust, reliable, and aligned with best practices.

These standards break the LCA process into four main steps:

  1. Goal and scope definition: Determine which products to include in your LCA, set the goals and intended application, identify the target audience, and define the scope to align with your assessment objectives.
  2. Inventory analysis: Collect and organise all input and output data throughout the product’s life cycle, ensuring data is well-structured for accurate environmental impact calculations in the next LCA steps.
  3. Impact assessment: Conduct a Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) by selecting impact categories, classifying data, and calculating environmental impacts using standardised methods.
  4. Interpretation: The final step is interpreting the LCA results by analysing data, understanding limitations, and creating actionable recommendations to make a positive environmental impact.

Interested to learn more about how to conduct an LCA? Read our blog here. 

Four main steps of LCA process

ISO 14040 / 14044 and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)

EPDs demonstrate how ISO standards are essential for using LCA data for environmental reporting. EPDs transparently report a product’s life cycle environmental performance using objective, comparable and third-party verified data. 

To create an EPD, you must use LCA data that adheres to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, the application-specific ISO 14025 standard and sector-specific Product Category Rules (PCRs) where relevant. With EPDs already mandatory in construction and anticipated to expand to sectors including cosmetics, electronics, and automotive, having LCAs aligned to these ISO standards is a crucial step in creating EPDs in the future. 

At Root we allow users to upload data from EPDs because they use data from ISO 14040 and 14044 aligned LCAs. This ensures the EPD data is credible and robust so we feel confident using this data to create product and company-level footprints. 

We can help

Root creates comprehensive, ISO 14040 and 14044 aligned LCAs that help businesses accurately measure, reduce and communicate their company-wide and product-level footprints.

We aim to redefine the norm by making product footprints universal. Our platform conducts automated LCAs for entire product portfolios – helping businesses report effectively on regulations, avoid greenwashing and become industry leaders in sustainability.

Interested to learn more? Get in touch with our team to discover how Root can help you achieve compliance and drive sustainable growth.

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