The enhanced LCA Resources Directory: a tool aimed at improving Life Cycle Thinking practices

Purpose To support life cycle-based EU policies, the European Commission created the “European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA).” The platform aims at providing coherent and quality-assured life cycle data, methods, and studies. The LCA Resources Directory (RD), one of the deliverables of the EPLCA, has so far consisted of lists of services, tools, databases, and providers. It has been decided to extend its scope to contain a section on LCA studies with metadata to characterize them. The research question addressed in this paper is “which structure and features should the RD have to store LCA studies so that it can efficiently support and promote robust Life Cycle Thinking practices?”