12. Recommends that the Commission develop the concept of life-cycle thinking into a policy principle that could be referenced but stresses the need to have a realistic understanding of the value and manifold limitations of life-cycle assessments (LCAs), in particular given the continuing problems with regard to the availability, quality and comparability of LCA data;

18. Maintains in this connection that, in order to reduce the cost of measures and not to exclude small and medium-sized businesses from the process, environmental indicators based on an assessment of products' simplified lifecycle should be established; stresses the importance of establishing precise and uniform parameters for such a lifecycle analysis; such indicators should be representative and consistent and should reflect the main environmental impact and the most significant environmental aspects of each product range; they ...[+++]should be established (e.g. by product panels) by agreement amongst the various groups concerned with a view to determining the most relevant indicators and establishing methods for measuring those indicators which, however, should be revised periodically and, if necessary, updated; it should be pointed out that LCA methods are still difficult to apply, particularly in terms of use of resources, time and analysis of the results; such difficulties increase significantly where small and medium-sized businesses are concerned and where there are structural differences between the various Member States (for example, differing combinations of energy sources);

Such indicators should be representative and consistent and should reflect the main environmental impact and the most significant environmental aspects of each product range; they should be established (e.g. by product panels) by agreement amongst the various groups concerned with a view to determining the most relevant indicators and establishing methods for measuring those indicators which, however, should be revised every so often and, if necessary, updated; it should be pointed out that LCA methods are still difficult to apply, particularly in terms of use of resources, time and analysis ...[+++] of the results. Such difficulties increase significantly where small and medium-sized businesses are concerned and where there are structural differences between the various Member States (for example, differing combinations of energy sources);

[9] As opposed to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which is different and involves the quantification and assessment of the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life-cycle, albeit, for practical reasons, in narrowly defined boundaries.

On the subject of life-cycle assessment, several stakeholders pointed to the limitations of the methodology, while others expressed support for the development of life-cycle information databases and awareness-raising measures to support good practice.

Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) and Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs) are effective instruments to this end.