Promoting life cycle thinking in higher education

The objective of the "Promoting life cycle thinking in higher education", Life-C project is to provide education and practical training in the life cycle assessment (LCA) field to minimize the environmental, economic, and social impact of the products and activities on future economies and industries. To this aim, the Consortium from Finland, Greece, Italy, and Poland has the specific objective of raising Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) awareness among Higher Education students, especially those from engineering and economic faculties, soon joining the modern industry. LCT awareness is spread by preparing and disseminating an e-learning course, made of a basic level, devoted to introducing students to LCT, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Social-LCA (S-LCA), and Life Cycle Costing (LCC)), and an advanced one devoted to the LCA application. This article presents and review practical challenges for students developed in the project, formulated as project-based assignments in the field of LCA prepared within the project. The challenges aim to provide meaningful training for the students on the current state-of-the-art of LCA application in modern industry in terms of problem subjects, methodologies, problem background, and motivation, all based on the input of modern Companies and Researchers from different industry branches.