ISO 22526-4:2023

Plastics — Carbon and environmental footprint of biobased plastics — Part 4: Environmental (total) footprint (Life cycle assessment)

Scope

This document provides life cycle assessment (LCA) requirements and guidance to assess impacts over the life cycle of biobased plastic products, materials and polymer resins, which are partly or wholly based on biobased constituents.
The applications of LCA as such are outside the scope of this document. Clarifications, considerations, practices, simplifications and options for the different applications, are also beyond the scope of this document.
In addition, this document can be applied in studies that do not cover the whole life cycle, with justification, for example in the case of business-to-business information, such as cradle-to-gate studies, gate-to-gate studies, and specific parts of the life cycle (e.g. waste management, components of a product). For these studies, most requirements of this document are applicable (e.g. data quality, collection and calculation as well as allocation and critical review), but not all the requirements for the system boundary.