International standards with a life cycle perspective: which dimension of sustainability is addressed?

Purpose The aim of this study is to explore the dimensions of sustainability that addressed the most within international standards and thereby present a life cycle perspective. The intent is to support life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners in identifying case by case the standards to be used and the methods of considering life cycle concepts beyond environmental aspects. Methods The first step was data screening. International standards were searched through the British Standards Institution (BSI) Group database by inserting the keywords "life cycle" and "life-cycle," to include the greatest number of standards. The second step was data cleaning. The documents were selected by eliminating duplicate results and those standards not in force. The majority of the documents obtained were published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). After a content analysis, the third research step selected 54 standards for the following discussion based on the coherence of contents with the research topic. Finally, in the data categorization step, each standard was classified in terms of the dimensions of sustainability addressed, year of publication, and field of application. Results and discussion The results showed that the dimension of sustainability addressed most frequently is the environmental dimension, and it is associated with LCAs and ecological labels. The second dimension of sustainability is the economic dimension, and it is associated with technology development and the adoption of life cycle costing. Conclusions This study shows that (i) the concept of life cycle is present in several standards with different meanings and applications, (ii) all the dimensions of sustainability are considered by the totality of the analyzed standards, and (iii) the environment is the dimension addressed the most.