Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for Packaging: What It Tells You and What It Doesn’t
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Ask ten people what makes packaging sustainable and you’ll likely get ten different answers.
Some will point to recyclability. Others will focus on recycled content, compostability, refill systems, or carbon emissions. While each of these factors matters, none tells the full story.
This challenge explains why more beauty brands are turning to Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) when evaluating packaging options. Rather than focusing on a single environmental attribute, an LCA examines impacts across a package’s entire lifecycle, from raw material extraction through manufacturing, transportation, and end-of-life management.
The goal is not to identify a universally sustainable package. Instead, the goal is to understand tradeoffs.
These tradeoffs matter. According to sustainability researchers focused on the beauty sector, packaging can account for up to 35% of a cosmetic product’s environmental impact, depending on the product category.
As sustainability commitments become more ambitious and regulatory scrutiny increases, brands need better ways to evaluate packaging decisions. LCAs offer one of the most widely accepted frameworks for doing exactly that.
What Is a Life Cycle Assessment?
A Life Cycle Assessment is a structured methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts throughout a product’s lifecycle.
The process follows internationally recognized standards established by the International Organization for Standardization. Specifically, ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 define the principles and requirements commonly used when conducting LCAs.
For packaging, an LCA typically evaluates:
- Raw material extraction and production
- Manufacturing and package conversion
- Transportation and distribution
- End-of-life management
This cradle-to-grave approach allows brands to compare packaging options using a consistent framework.
More importantly, it helps answer a question that packaging teams face every day:
Which tradeoffs are we making, and are they worth it?
Why Manufacturers Use LCAs
Packaging decisions rarely revolve around a single objective.
A package may need to reduce cost, protect the product, improve shelf appeal, meet retailer requirements, support sustainability goals, and fit within existing manufacturing capabilities. These priorities often compete with one another.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Life Cycle Initiative, organizations use life cycle approaches to support product development, procurement, production, and management decisions. The objective is not simply to reduce one environmental impact. Instead, it is to avoid improving one area while creating unintended consequences elsewhere in the value chain.
This balancing act is familiar to beauty brands evaluating packaging and manufacturing partners. Decisions involving packaging, production, sustainability, and scalability often require tradeoffs between performance, cost, operational efficiency, and environmental impact.
Brands evaluating manufacturing partners often face similar decisions around materials, sourcing strategies, and production capabilities.
Take A Closer Look: What Brands Are Considering When Picking A Manufacturing Partner
The Most Valuable LCA Finding Is Often the One Nobody Expected
Many companies approach LCAs expecting confirmation.
What they often receive instead is a surprise.
“An LCA can reveal that a material widely viewed as sustainable actually generates higher emissions than the incumbent option because of processing energy or transportation requirements.”
— Ciara Donohue, Manager, CSR/Global Sustainability at Arcade Beauty
This ability to challenge assumptions represents one of the most valuable aspects of an LCA. Data does not always support conventional wisdom.
In many cases, the most productive outcome is not validating an existing belief. It is uncovering a result that forces teams to ask better questions.
Consider two packaging formats that perform the same function.
One package uses a highly recyclable material but requires significantly more material and energy to produce. The other uses less material and ships more efficiently but offers fewer recycling options.
Which package is more sustainable?
Without evaluating the full lifecycle, the answer is difficult to determine.
An LCA provides a framework for comparing those tradeoffs using data rather than assumptions.
Timing Matters More Than Many Brands Realize
Many brands assume the value of an LCA comes from the final report.
In reality, the timing of the assessment often determines how useful it will be.
“An LCA commissioned during concept development has a chance to influence decisions. An LCA commissioned just before launch is almost always validating a direction that has already been chosen.”
— Ciara Donohue, Manager, CSR/Global Sustainability at Arcade Beauty
When conducted during package development, an LCA can help teams compare materials, evaluate packaging architectures, assess transportation impacts, and identify opportunities for improvement.
At that stage, specifications remain flexible.
Once a package has been approved and prepared for launch, the situation changes. Brands often commission LCAs later in the process to support environmental claims, satisfy customer requests, or document sustainability performance.
These studies still provide value. However, they rarely alter the underlying packaging strategy.
Simply put, an LCA conducted during concept development can shape a decision. An LCA conducted immediately before launch often validates a decision that has already been made.
Many of the same considerations appear during commercialization planning, where decisions around scale, manufacturing, and packaging become increasingly difficult to change:
What Drives Most Packaging LCA Results?
Consumers often focus on recyclability when discussing sustainable packaging. LCAs tell a more complete story.
While every packaging system differs, four factors typically drive the majority of environmental impacts.
Raw Materials
Raw materials often represent the largest contributor to a package’s environmental footprint.
“Across many LCAs, raw materials represent more than half of a package’s carbon footprint. End-of-life considerations often receive more attention, but they typically account for a much smaller portion of the overall impact.”
— Ciara Donohue, Manager, CSR/Global Sustainability at Arcade Beauty
This finding challenges a common assumption in sustainability discussions.
Consumers often focus on disposal because it is visible. Material production is not. Manufacturing energy is not. Transportation emissions are not.
Yet these upstream decisions frequently drive a larger share of environmental impact.
Manufacturing
The energy required to convert raw materials into finished packaging also plays a significant role.
Different manufacturing processes require different levels of energy and resources. Consequently, two packages made from similar materials may produce very different environmental outcomes.
Transportation
Packaging does not exist in isolation.
Shipping distances, freight methods, package weight, and supply chain complexity all influence environmental performance.
Even relatively small changes in packaging weight can affect transportation impacts across large production volumes.
End-of-Life Management
End-of-life considerations include recycling, composting, landfill disposal, and waste-to-energy systems.
These issues deserve attention. However, they do not always dominate LCA results.
In fact, many LCAs show that raw materials and manufacturing contribute a larger share of environmental impact than disposal pathways.
This finding surprises many stakeholders because sustainability conversations often focus almost exclusively on what happens after a package reaches the consumer.
Which Metrics Matter Most?
A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment can evaluate more than a dozen environmental indicators.
However, three metrics tend to drive packaging discussions.
1. Global Warming Potential (GWP)
Global Warming Potential, often reported as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), remains the most widely used metric because it aligns with climate goals, sustainability reporting initiatives, and corporate emissions reduction commitments.
2. Fossil Fuel Consumption
This metric helps brands understand how much non-renewable energy a packaging system requires throughout its lifecycle.
3. Water Consumption
Water usage continues to gain attention as sustainability programs expand beyond carbon reduction alone.
Together, these metrics provide a more complete view of environmental performance than any single sustainability claim.
What LCAs Don’t Tell You
Despite their value, LCAs are not crystal balls.
Every assessment depends on assumptions, methodologies, system boundaries, and data quality. Different studies can produce different results depending on the inputs used.
LCAs also struggle to account for every real-world variable. Consumer behavior, regional recycling infrastructure, evolving regulations, and future waste management practices can all influence outcomes in ways that are difficult to model.
For that reason, the best packaging teams treat LCAs as decision-support tools rather than definitive answers. The objective is not a perfect certainty, it is better decision-making.
Why Europe Is Raising the Stakes
Demand for packaging LCAs continues to grow worldwide. However, Europe is increasingly moving beyond voluntary sustainability reporting.
“In Europe, LCAs are increasingly becoming a compliance and substantiation tool. In North America, they are still used primarily as a voluntary communications exercise.”
— Ciara Donohue, Manager, CSR/Global Sustainability at Arcade Beauty
The European Union’s Green Claims initiative seeks to strengthen requirements around environmental marketing claims and supporting evidence.
As regulations evolve, brands may need stronger substantiation for sustainability claims. Consequently, many organizations operating in European markets increasingly view LCAs as compliance and risk-management tools rather than optional sustainability exercises.
For beauty brands with global ambitions, this shift deserves attention.
Packaging Decisions Shape Sustainability Outcomes Long Before Launch
Many sustainability conversations begin with recycling. In reality, some of the most important environmental decisions occur much earlier.
- Material selection
- Package architecture
- Component choices
- Manufacturing requirements
- Transportation strategies
These decisions often determine a significant portion of a package’s environmental footprint before a consumer ever opens the product. This reality helps explain why LCAs are most valuable when they inform packaging development rather than simply document the results.
Packaging teams often search for a single metric that can identify the most sustainable option. LCAs rarely provide this kind of certainty. What they do provide is something more useful: a clearer view of the tradeoffs behind every packaging decision.
For brands developing beauty, fragrance, and personal care products, this understanding may be more valuable than any single sustainability claim. Brands navigating growth, reformulation, or commercialization efforts should also consider how manufacturing decisions influence sustainability outcomes.
The Bottom Line
Packaging teams often search for a single metric that can identify the most sustainable option. Life Cycle Assessments rarely provide this kind of certainty. What they provide is a structured way to evaluate tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, and make better decisions earlier in the development process.
For beauty brands, this may be the most valuable insight of all. The most effective packaging decisions rarely happen after a product is ready for launch. They happen when teams ask the right questions while there is still time to act on the answers.