Evaluating business model environmental impact with Business Model Life Cycle Assessment (BM-LCA): Learnings from five case studies

Paper i proceeding, 2023

Business model life cycle assessment (BM-LCA) is a novel LCA methodology that has been adapted for analyzing business model environmental performance. In principle, BM-LCA can be applied to any type of business model involving material or resource use and be used for validating sustainable business models, within business model innovation for sustainability and analysis for decoupling within a business practice. Here, findings and experiences from a handful of case studies with BM-LCA will be presented. The cases have been conducted in collaboration with companies in Sweden and represent a variety of business models and product types. The business models have different levels of complexity to put the applicability of BM-LCA to the test. Learnings about environmental performance of business models, the methodology, and its usefulness in practice will be covered. Moreover, to better understand the contribution of BM-LCA, the method is compared with published frameworks for sustainable business model assessment and circular business model innovation.