Mapping out the life cycle of your product (or service) can help you make your production process more sustainable, make better purchasing choices and reflect on your product’s life after use. After all, the choices you make in every life phase of your product will ultimately determine how big the environmental impact will be. From the raw materials you use and the product location you choose to logistics and the proximity of recyclingAny recovery operation through which waste, including organic waste, is reprocessed to become substances, materials or products that can be used for their initial function or other functions. facilities: every step matters if you truly want to make a difference.
Three major phases can be distinguished: the start, development and end phase of a product. Each of those phases comes with its specific challenges and opportunities. They should not be seen as a finite timeline but as a cycle: after its “demise”, a product can be reuseReuse designates all operations by which substances, materials or products that are not waste are used again in an identical way to their originally intended purpose.d as raw material to create a new product.