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On 5-8^th September, we had the opportunity to participate and collaborate with the 10th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM 2021), the biggest and most relevant international conference in life cycle management were leading experts from academia, industry and politics meet.

Our consortium coordinated the Session 3.7 on “Operationalising Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment” with about 50 participants discussing about Product LCSA as a fundamental tool to achieve sustainability, integrating the assessment of environmental, economic and social impacts.

During this session, affordability, flexibility, contextualization and engagement of stakeholders were pointed out as important aspects to handle to promote LCSA use and its practical implementation.

Some technical issues raised from the debate among LCSA practitioners from all the participant organizations. While several applications of integrated methods were described, the main challenges to operationalization were pointed out, including analysis of trade-offs, weighting and interpretation of results. The never-ending debate among LCA experts between attributional versus consequential modelling was also stimulated, adding new perspectives to the discussion.

It also emerged the need to carefully define Areas of Protection and how to consider Circular Economy in the LCSA context, a means to achieve sustainability rather than an end.

Contributions and elements gathered during the session provided initial ideas that can support further methodological developments to operationalize LCSA and move towards a Product Sustainability Footprint. The relevance of ORIENTING for the operationalization of LCSA was highlighted, and participants were invited to register as stakeholders.