The application of Life Cycle Assessment in sustainable furniture system design

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a quantitative methodology to assess the environmental impacts of products, services, and systems. The European Commission has defined 23 LCA applications within which developing design strategies is an important one. Considering the furniture production and consumption system is one of the challenges that should be addressed for a better quality of life for residents and lower pollution levels for the environment, the study aimed to define sustainable furniture design strategies based on a systematic literature review of former LCA analysis. The exploration provided an overview of sustainable furniture design strategies in 3 different levels: single indicator, furniture life cycle and furniture Product-Service System (PSS) levels in the form of a design framework which also shows how various design strategies contribute to sustainable furniture systems and visualizes complementarities between these strategies.