Exploring Sustainability through Life Cycle Thinking

From his perspective as an environmental scientist, Lucas Abel led a workshop on sustainability assessment, introducing the students to life cycle assessment (LCA) as a method for evaluating environmental impacts across a product’s lifespan, using footwear as a case study. Through literature and discussions, the students critically engaged with the complexities of LCA, including challenges such as data availability, trade-offs in environmental impact assessments and the limitations of existing evaluation models. The workshop emphasised strategic thinking in product systems, encouraging the students to con- sider sustainability beyond material choices and to integrate ecological impact assessment into their design processes.