LCA for long-term sustainable purchases

How can a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) affect our choices of sustainable purchases? We have asked Fredrik Kollberg, Supply Chain Manager for Armaton, who gives us the following response:

“We want to work with suppliers who care about sustainability and value environmentally friendly energy alternatives for their production facilities. When choosing a supplier, we always make sure that they are ISO 14001 certified or have similar environmental management systems. The way our suppliers work with sustainability greatly affects the total carbon footprint that our products make during their lifetime.

A LCA on a standard Armaton platform helps us map how much of the product's total carbon emission that comes from our suppliers. With this data, we can identify the suppliers with the highest emission levels and thereby have the highest climate impact on our products. Together with these suppliers, we will then discuss measures to minimize the total carbon footprint in the production process of our products.”