2022 Volume 18 Issue 2 Pages 77-82
Policies for sustainable consumption （SC） have been implemented for more than a quarter of a century, but environmental impacts of consumption keep increasing. This paper refers to the existing approach as improvement policy approach, and an alternative approach to be developed in the future as system-transition policy approach, and then explains the outline of each approach and implications for Life-Cycle Assessment （LCA） studies. There are roughly three types of policy instruments for improvement-type SC policy and every of them can be supported by LCA results meaningfully; however, limitations exist. The system transition approach can complement the improvement-type SC policy, as a conceptualized idea of this approach Envisioning-Based Policy Making （EnBPM） is devised, and its outline and advantages are explained. Policy insights obtained are that it is desirable to carry out collaborative work that goes beyond the boundaries of conventional stakeholders, and that the “arena” plays a large role in this regard. From the viewpoint of EnBPM, it is expected that LCA evolves so as to be used for sophisticated screening and formative evaluation.
