Life Cycle Thinking (LCT)

The habit of judging a product, service or process by everything it causes over its whole life — from extracting raw materials, through manufacture, use and maintenance, to disposal or recovery — rather than only at the point where it is used. Its purpose is to stop problems being moved around unseen: a solution that cleans water locally but needs large amounts of energy or chemicals elsewhere has not necessarily improved anything. LCA, LCC and S-LCA are the formal methods built on this idea.