Extending Product Lifespans as an Upstream Strategy for Reducing Waste Generation and Resource Dissipation from an LCA Perspective

Waste prevention begins upstream, in decisions made long before a product becomes waste. This article examines product lifetime management as an upstream environmental strategy and asks when longer product use can reduce waste generation, resource consumption and environmental impacts across the life cycle. An integrative literature review combined exploratory searches in Google Scholar and citation tracking with a structured search of Scopus. Records were screened by title, abstract and keywords. Publications in English were considered without a date limit and selected according to their relevance to product lifetime, premature replacement, repair and lifetime extension, consumer and business decisions, regulation, waste prevention and life cycle assessment. The selected studies were supplemented with relevant legal, regulatory, institutional and standardisation documents, producing a final reference base of 240 sources. The review shows that actual product lifetime is shaped not only by technical durability, but also by repairability, access to spare parts and information, continued software and service support, opportunities for upgrading and reuse, business incentives and consumer behaviour. Extending product use can reduce waste and resource demand, but environmental benefits are not automatic. They depend on product characteristics, energy consumption, technological progress and, above all, whether prolonged use genuinely replaces the production and purchase of new products. Product lifetime management should therefore be understood as a coordinated upstream strategy linking design, repair, reuse, business models, regulation and consumption with environmental assessment across the life cycle.