Life Cycle Assessment as a decision-making tool within vaccine manufacturing – Potential and Limitations

Abstract: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used method for evaluating the environmental impacts of a product throughout its entire life cycle. As a decision-making tool, LCA allows decision-makers to identify the environmental hotspots in a product or process, and to explore opportunities for improvement. However, while LCA has many potentials, it also has several limitations that need to be considered. One of the main limitations of LCA is the difficulty in obtaining accurate data, particularly for the upstream and downstream stages of a product's life cycle. Another limitation is the challenge of interpreting the results, as LCA involves complex calculations and assumptions that can be difficult for non-experts to understand. Despite these limitations, LCA remains a valuable tool for informing decision-making, and efforts are being made to address these limitations through the development of standardized methods and improved data collection and interpretation techniques. This paper provides an overview of LCA as a decision-making tool in the context of vaccine manufacturing, its potential and limitations, and the current state of research in this field.