This is the first blog in a series about LCAs, and is based upon the work carried out by partner GeoSense who is conducted LCAs for all of the project’s Use Cases.
Have you ever wondered what the real environmental footprint of something is, that is not just what you can see, but everything that happens behind the scenes?
Think of a loaf of bread, for example. Its story doesn’t begin in the bakery, but in the wheat field: it actually starts with seeds, fertilisers, tractors, and continues later on with processing, packaging, and transport, adding on top of all that the energy that powers every relevant
equipment along the way, from the machines that produce fertilisers and pesticides, the fuel of transport means to the electricity used by the oven.
Now imagine doing the same for a drone, or for the many ways drones are being used to make farming and rural life more efficient. That’s exactly what we are trying to do in ICAERUS.
How Life Cycle Thinking Helps Us Understand Environmental Impact?
Life Cycle Assessment (or LCA, for short) is a scientific method that helps us measure how much impact a product or service has on the environment from start to finish. We call this approach “from cradle to grave”, that is, from the materials used to make it, through how it’s used, all the way to when it’s disposed of, reused or recycled.
It’s a bit like following the full life journey of every element involved in creating a product or service – energy, water, materials, transport, waste – and seeing how each step affects our planet.
While this “cradle to grave” approach is very comprehensive and useful, however, not every study looks at exactly the same steps. Depending on the case study, the purpose of the analysis, and the availability of data, researchers can adjust which stages in the life of a product or service are included, which we call the “system boundaries.”
For example, in one case we might look only at the “cradle to gate” phase (everything up to the point a product leaves the factory), while in another we might include its use and end-of-life stages too. This flexibility allows LCA to adapt to different technologies and questions, like in ICAERUS, where each drone application has its own unique life cycle and environmental challenges.
Why Are We Using It for Drones?
In ICAERUS, we’re exploring how drones can support agriculture and rural services, from monitoring crops and forests, to spraying fields, watching over livestock, and even delivering supplies to remote areas.
Drones are innovative, but are they really better for the environment than traditional methods, like tractors, planes, or cars?
To find out, we’re applying LCA in order to compare the impacts on the environment of each drone-based application with its conventional alternative.
This way, we can see where drones truly make a difference:
- Do they reduce emissions? And if so, which kind of emissions and in which amount?
- How much energy do their batteries and sensors require?
- Does the fuel that they save compensate for the amount of electricity they use?
- Do they require more non-renewable materials (either minerals or fossil fuels)?
Only by looking at the whole picture can we answer accurately those questions and fully understand if and where they improve the impact on the environment.
Why It Matters?
As we all search for smarter, greener ways to live and produce, it’s easy to assume that “new technology” automatically means “better for the planet.”
But environmental sustainability shouldn’t be about assumptions, but about evidence. And that’s precisely what LCA can give us: a fair, transparent way to understand what’s really going on behind every product or service we use.
For farmers, policymakers, and innovators, this knowledge helps make decisions that are not just practical, but also genuinely sustainable.
Stay tuned for the next part 2. where we will take a closer look at how an LCA works.
