All products that are created for human use use raw materials from Nature. In addition, the making of the products involves energy and fuel and may emit waste substances into the environment. To complete the process of manufacture, often materials and end products are transported and involve the use of fuel. The use of the ready product itself may have an impact on the environment and when the life of the product is over, its disposal may cause pollution too!

To truly understand the environmental impacts of any product and to be able to gauge whether it is ecosensitive or not, one would have to look at the entire process of the birth of a a product (cradle) to its so called death (grave). This study is called  Life cycle assessment.

According to Wikipedia

The term 'life cycle' refers to the notion that a fair, holistic assessment requires the assessment of raw material production, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal including all intervening transportation steps necessary or caused by the product's existence. The sum of all those steps - or phases - is the life cycle of the product. The concept also can be used to optimize the environmental performance of a single product (ecodesign) or to optimize the environmental performance of a company.

Read more about Life Cycle Assessment at

The Global Development Research Center