Considering Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment to Evaluate Environmental Externalities

Environmental externalities are a typical example of market failures. These market failures could be corrected if decision makers had the “right” information and were aware of the real costs of their activities. Currently, companies consider biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (ES) as environmental externalities. The idea proposed in this paper is to study the links between the life cycle of a product and ES. To achieve that, the paper presents an approach to account for ES in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This proposal is illustrated in an industrial case study by means of a bio economic model of ES.