Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy
European Life Cycle Assessment Platform

The EPLCA is the EU’s knowledge base that responds to business and policy needs towards sustainable production and consumption. It supports the methodological development of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the analysis of supply chains and end-of-life waste management.

  • Topic / Tool | Last updated: 06 May 2026
Sustainable consumption

The JRC’s work on sustainable consumption centres on its Consumption Footprint framework, applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts of EU consumption.

Brief me

The JRC’s work on sustainable consumption centres on its Consumption Footprint framework, applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts of EU consumption. This approach, covering all 16 Environmental Footprint categories, includes trade-embedded impacts and is updated annually to support Green Deal policies, hotspot identification, scenario testing, and SDG 12 monitoring.

Explore further

Consumption Footprint

The European Commission has developed an assessment framework to monitor the evolution of the overall environmental footprint of EU production and consumption, and to compare the footprint against planetary boundaries. The consumption…

Latest knowledge