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End-of-life is one of the most underestimated stages in Life Cycle Assessment. Yet for many products — especially packaging, electronics, and apparel — it can change the overall result more than materials or manufacturing. A thoughtful end-of-life model not only strengthens the credibility of your LCA but also reveals where circular design and better infrastructure can make a measurable difference. This guide expands beyond the basics to help you build meaningful, easy-to-explain, and decision-ready disposal scenarios that work for beginners and experts alike.

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Why End-of-Life Matters

End-of-life isn’t just the final step of the product lifecycle — it’s where many strategic decisions become visible:
  • Climate impact: Incineration, landfill, and recycling each influence emissions differently.
  • Resource efficiency: Recovery rates determine how much new material your product ultimately requires.
  • Compliance: Many markets now expect cradle-to-grave insights for reporting, eco-design, and extended producer responsibility (EPR).
  • Circularity: Reuse, repair, refurbishing, and closed-loop recycling unlock value beyond single-use thinking.
When sustainability teams model end-of-life well, the result is a clearer roadmap for design improvements, supply-chain discussions, and consumer communication.
Well-structured end-of-life scenarios help translate circular ambitions into measurable, data-driven sustainability decisions.

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4 Common End-of-Life Scenarios

ScenarioWhat to Model
♻️ RecyclingCollection and sorting, yield losses, quality of output, recovered material value
🚮 LandfillLong-term emissions potential and transportation to disposal sites
🔥 IncinerationEnergy recovery potential and emissions during thermal treatment
🔁 ReuseCleaning, transport distances, and the number of cycles the item can support
Recycling and reuse are often promoted as “sustainable solutions,” but modeling them properly is essential — recovery rates and infrastructure realities determine whether the benefits materialize.

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How to Include End-of-Life in Your LCA

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Step 1: Choose Your System Boundary

End-of-life modeling is only visible in cradle-to-grave or cradle-to-cradle assessments.
Cradle-to-gate LCAs stop at manufacturing and exclude disposal entirely.
If your audience includes product teams or policymakers, cradle-to-grave often provides the most actionable insights.

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Step 2: Define Your Assumptions

Good end-of-life modeling is built on transparent, realistic assumptions. Key elements include:
  • Recovery or recycling rate (what portion of the product enters each route)
  • Sorting and processing losses
  • Transport distances to relevant facilities
  • Energy used for treatment or cleaning
  • What the recovered material displaces (e.g., virgin plastic, paper pulp)
  • Reuse cycles (for systems with repeated use)
Documenting these assumptions is crucial for credibility — and makes your results easier to compare across products or updates.

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Step 3: Build Scenarios in Your LCA Tool

Modern sustainability tools streamline end-of-life modeling by offering structured data, regional averages, and scenario toggles. Platforms like Sustainly help users:
  • Use predefined end-of-life templates tailored to regions
  • Compare different waste treatment paths quickly
  • Keep assumptions centralized and visible across teams
  • Run sensitivity analyses without rebuilding entire models
This makes scenario-building accessible even to non-experts and ensures assumptions remain aligned across departments.

Centralize Assumptions

Ensure end-of-life data stays consistent across product lines and teams.

Scale Scenarios

Reuse templates to test multiple design paths or circular strategies.

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Example: PET Bottle End-of-Life Scenarios

Below is a simplified illustration to show how disposal options shift climate impact:
ScenarioClimate Impact
100% landfill120 g CO₂e
50% recycled70 g CO₂e
100% incinerated (energy recovery)90 g CO₂e
This demonstrates how designing for recycling and supporting collection infrastructure can significantly reduce lifecycle emissions. But the real takeaway is broader: changing the end-of-life profile often has more impact than swapping minor material fractions in the product.

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Reporting Tips That Build Trust

Clear communication is a core part of end-of-life modeling, especially when stakeholders aren’t familiar with LCA terminology.
  • Report end-of-life percentages explicitly (e.g., 60% recycling, 30% landfill, 10% incineration)
  • Use region-specific assumptions, or explain why defaults were chosen
  • Include a short justification for each scenario
  • Provide sensitivity results that highlight uncertainty
  • Document which assumptions have the biggest influence on results
The easiest way to ensure consistency is to maintain a shared library of end-of-life assumptions for all products.

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Final Takeaway

Modeling end-of-life isn’t just a technical exercise — it’s where circularity, policy requirements, and design decisions converge. When done well, it gives sustainability teams a clearer picture of where change really matters and helps organizations prioritize investments in recycling, reuse systems, and materials innovation. Sustainly supports this work by providing structured templates, transparent AI assistance, and a centralized sustainability data hub that keeps team assumptions aligned across projects. End-of-life modeling is where strategy becomes tangible — and where meaningful sustainability improvements often begin.