Life-cycle and environmental aspects evaluation

Answer:

Yes, the life-cycle of the products should be evaluated in perspective of environmental aspects, meaning that you need to identify and evaluate all environmental aspects that emerge in each phase of your product life-cycle and to define operational controls for each significant environmental aspect.

For example, if you produce some chemicals, during the production there can be various environmental aspects so you need to prescribe how the impact of those aspects will be decreased, than in the phase of storage and transport, the chemicals may be spilled, so it is an environmental aspect that you control by defining way of packaging, storing and transporting the chemicals.

But there are some phases of life-cycle that you may not control, such as the storage conditions at your clients, etc. In such situations you can't prescribe operational controls but you can provide the instructions to your clients.

The point is, during the evaluation of environmental aspects in life-cycle of your products you need to determine not only the significant environmental aspects, but also the extent of the controls that you can establish.

For more information, see:
- 4 steps in identification and evaluation of environmental aspects https://advisera.com/14001academy/knowledgebase/4-steps-in-identification-and-evaluation-of-environmental-aspects/