After its debut in the European Commission's integrated product policy(COM(2003)302) as the 'best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products', life cycle thinking (LCT) and life cycle assessment (LCA) has become increasingly used in support of community policies and business. Focus has been primarily on establishing agreed methods, both within Europe and internationally. The European Commission's European platform on LCA (EPLCA) has continued to address the equally essential issue of data availability, coherence and quality assurance. LCA has become an important approach to boost smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union (EU). As an example, in the context of the Europe 2020 flagship initiative, 'A resource-efficient Europe',the 'Single market for green products communication' and the related European Commission recommendation for the product environmental footprint and the organisation environmental footprint guides. These methodologies reflect a vital milestone in the aim to increase coherence and quality in the assessment of the environmental performance of products and organisations. Other prominent applications include, in support of the waste framework directive, the ecodesign directive, the EU ecolabel scheme, the EU green public procurement, the raw materials initiative and the bio economy strategy, as well as provide a more advanced basis for indicators and targets accounting for the burdens of EU imports and exports to help focus policies and research funding. LCT is essential in modern decision-making in business and policy. Commonly implemented through LCA, it is increasingly necessary to quantify the benefits and burdens associated with products, both goods and services, that occur in their supply chains during use as well as at end-of-life. This helps to avoid the shifting of burdens between different geographic regions, generations and impacts. Within this framework the EPLCA, developed by the JRC together with DG Environment, represents the reference point for data and methods essential to implementing life cycle-based approaches. The EPLCA promotes the availability of data and information, with a focus on coherence and quality assurance. Although methodology development is advancing fast, the availability of coherent, quality-assured life cycle data and studies still represents a major challenge to mainstream the use of LCA and associated environmental footprint methods in business and in policy.
