**1. Introduction**

The life cycle assessment (LCA) method aims to assess the product or process's environmental impact along its life cycle [1–3]. This technique or tool focuses mainly on evaluating the contributions that the use of a product or execution of a process has to the overall environmental load. This evaluation may be of help for improvements of the product or process [1]. However, it has been highlighted that LCA works under the premise of "reducing unsustainability" using common indicators to achieve a so-called "eco-design" [4].

Among the four stages found in the ISO14040 guidelines, the LCA starts defining how much of the product life cycle will be evaluated along with the specific purpose of the evaluation. This stage is followed by resources' flux balances, that is, material flux, energy flux, of the product or process and its interaction with the environment, for example, emissions and raw materials consumption. From such resources' flux balances, an inventory analysis is conducted by following a set of indicators belonging to or distributed among various categories. The latter is arranged hierarchically with respect to the impact importance using weighting. The LCA finishes with a critical review of results and results presentation [1, 5].

Measuring a product's life cycle to reduce unsustainability intends to reduce its environmental impacts, but this may not help create sustainability [4] of the product or process because their continuity is yet to be considered, along with the conditions that assure the need for that product or process. In turn, the product or process assessment toward improvement needs to be based on achieving sustainability rather than reducing the negative impacts on the environment [4].

Assessment measures toward improvement based on achieving sustainability have been argued to be needed, where the design approaches, cradle-to-cradle, and biomimicry, are the closest aligned with sustainability achievement, aiming at creating beneficial impacts [4].

Thus, accounting for the previously presented arguments, does the conventional LCA method need a revision to change the paradigm? (i.e., achieving sustainability, **Figure 1**). Could the biomimicry philosophy help improve the current LCA method?

These two questions have led to a comprehensive yet systematic review based on a combination of keywords framed in the specific topic. Thus, the first keyword combination is Biomimicry AND ("life cycle assessment" OR LCA) on the Google Scholar database, without year restrictions. This keyword combination search yielded 2600 results. The same search in the ScienceDirect database yielded 216 results, among

#### **Figure 1.**

*Representation of a life cycle highlighting the inventory fluxes (inputs in blue, outputs in red) and impact assessment stages. Biomimicry principles (in pink) could act as an assessment complement toward developing a tool that evaluates sustainability achievement.*

*Including Nature-Based Success Measurement Criteria in the Life Cycle Assessment DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110401*

which 34 results were irrelevant documents such as part of books, for example, index and foreword.

This systematic literature search was analyzed using the VOSviewer software [6] to examine current research trends. Based on 210 documents, network, and overlay visualization maps are constructed using a compiled .ris file with the metadata of each document. Such maps can be created by using two approaches key terms in the keywords section from each research article or key terms in the title and abstract of each document, both based on a minimum threshold of occurrence of the key terms. The following observations can be drawn from the maps presented in **Figures 2–4**.

When using the recommended minimum threshold by the software algorithm, based on the occurrence of the keywords, the overlay visualization (**Figure 2**) presents the term "biomimicry." This term does not disappear for any minimum threshold in the keywords' occurrence approach. The contrary happens when the terms in the title and abstract are employed until the threshold is lower than six.

Nevertheless, in both approaches, the term "biomimicry" appeared as a topic of losing interest, that is, this term is not included as part of the titles, abstracts, and keywords in documents after 2016. That was seven years ago. The same appeared to happen with the term "biomimetics." This is worth mentioning because the interchangeability of both terms is still mistakenly employed among researchers, architects, and designers using nature as a source of inspiration. A clear and straightforward analysis of similarities and differences can be found in [7, 8].

Conversely to the no-use of the terms "biomimicry" and "biomimetics," the prefix "bio" is frequently spotted in recent documents (color yellow), which actually is intended to be referred to the same perspective as "inspired by nature." This indicates that cautiousness is still prompted to use the most meaningful terms when asking to what extent you are letting the design be inspired by nature: "biomimicry" or "biomimetics." Attention should be paid to this issue since a design solution "biologically inspired" does not intrinsically imply that the design solution is "nature-based" (**Figure 5**) because the former is embedded within the definitions of nature-based

**Figure 2.** *Overlay representation of the keyword occurrence approach, using the minimum occurrence threshold (16).*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Overlay representation of the keyword occurrence approach, using an occurrence threshold of two.*

#### **Figure 4.**

*Overlay representation of the keyword occurrence approach, using an occurrence threshold of one.*

solutions [9]. In addition, the use of the term "biomimetic system" was recently coined by the International Standard Organization (ISO) 18,458:2015 (recently reviewed and confirmed in 2021) [10], which claims: "… If a technical system is subjected to a development process according to this International Standard, then it is allowed to be referred to as a 'biomimetic' system" [10].

Moreover, specifically to the keyword occurrence approach (**Figures 2–4**), three terms appeared as having higher relevance in descending order: "circular economy," "sustainability," and "biomimicry." This tendency is also presented regarding timeline interests (**Figures 2–4**). On the other hand, the keyword "LCA" or "life cycle assessment" is not as frequently spotted as expected for a literature search based primarily on these keywords. Although this is before, it is interesting to observe how closely these two keywords are to the keyword "circular economy" based on a timeline

*Including Nature-Based Success Measurement Criteria in the Life Cycle Assessment DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110401*

#### **Figure 5.**

*Proposal for providing understanding and connections among the terms involved in the methods and processes using biological analogies (adapted from [9]).*

interest (**Figures 2–4**, in yellow). This shows the elevated attention paid to economic aspects, which is highlighted by other keywords in recent documents (in yellow): "circularity," "circular bioeconomy," "circular business model," "business model," "construction sector" (one of the most important contributors to the global economy), and "land use," and "… material." Regardless, the most frequent keywords "circular economy" and "sustainability" (**Figures 2–4**) are part of the objectives for which a designer carries out a LCA whether the scope of the assessment is the environmental, social, or economic impact of the product or process throughout its life cycle.
