# Explain why companies might misuse a selective or abbreviated life cycle assessment when making claims about their products.

> AQA GCSE Chemistry (8462) — 4.10.3 Using materials (Chem only) · Explain · 4 marks

> A washing-up liquid manufacturer publishes a life cycle assessment claiming its product is environmentally friendly. The assessment only considers the manufacturing stage of the product's life cycle.

## Mark scheme (4 marks)

1. A selective or abbreviated LCA only examines some stages of the life cycle (rather than all four stages)
2. Stages with large environmental impacts can be deliberately left out / ignored
3. This makes the product appear more environmentally friendly than it actually is
4. Because allocating numerical values to pollutant effects requires value judgements, the process is not purely objective and can be manipulated to support advertising claims

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