LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT FOR THE TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION GENERATION

摘要

In an increasingly competitive environment, innovation has become a fundamental element for competitiveness of companies and the environmental issue has been standing out as a differentiator for competitiveness. Thus, sustainable development has been rising to a prominent position in business environment and besides stimulating innovation; managers need to ensure good environmental performance of the organization. As a consequence, environmental evaluation techniques have been developed for the purpose of evaluation of the environmental load associated with the products. One technique that has stood out is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), because it covers the entire lifecycle of the product, being able to support the decision making within organizations. Thus, this study aims to determine the contribution of the LCA in the generation of industry innovation. For this, it had been conducted a literature survey approaching concepts related to environmental management, competitiveness and innovation, as well as the evolution of initiatives in the use of LCA, the use of LCA in industry, the indicators generated and the potential of LCA for generation of innovation. With this study it is possible to observe that the indicators generated in the analysis of the life cycle of the product may support the innovation being able to be used by companies as a source of information for innovation. In this sense, LCA can help or provide support for the generation of innovation that contributes to sustainable development.