An environmental profile is a synonym for the Life cycle impact assessment result (LCIA result). It represents the potential environmental impacts of a product system expressed in amounts of one or more impact category indicators.
The environmental profile provides a comprehensive overview of the environmental performance of a product throughout its entire life cycle. According to ISO 14040, Life Cycle Impact Assessment is the phase of Life Cycle Assessment aimed at understanding and evaluating the magnitude and significance of the potential environmental impacts for a product system throughout the life cycle of the product.
When practitioners compile an environmental profile, they are translating the life cycle inventory analysis results into quantifiable indicators that represent specific environmental concerns. These impact category indicators might include measures such as climate change potential (expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents), acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity, resource depletion, and many other categories relevant to understanding the product's environmental burden.
The term emphasises the profile or characterisation of environmental performance across multiple impact categories, providing decision-makers with a structured summary of how a product system affects various aspects of the environment. This multi-dimensional perspective is essential for comprehensive environmental assessment, as it prevents problem-shifting where improving one environmental aspect might inadvertently worsen another.
Other synonymous terms used in LCA practice include "product footprint" and "eco-balance", all referring to the same fundamental concept of expressing potential environmental impacts in standardised, quantifiable terms.
