Life cycle practitioners of tomorrow will be a more diverse group of professionals than the first generation. A couple of decades ago Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) was the concern of a limited group of experts in academia, research institutes and a few larger companies. Most members of the LC-community were known to each other and the field was limited in terms of job opportunities. Today the field has grown substantially. LC-experts are found in a range of positions in industry, consultancy, and governmental authorities. Many non-experts also come across the LC-concept at various stages in their professional life. While life cycle education for many years was a niche concern for specifically interested students, the dispersion of the LC-concept now raises different needs for education and training. Swedish Life Cycle Center, which aims at credible and applied LCT, has as one of its ambitions to meet these new needs by supporting education and training actions among its partners. The aim of our conference contribution is to describe how ongoing educational and training efforts in Sweden contribute to meet the needs.
15-20 dedicated LCA courses and a multitude of courses integrating the LC-perspective are given at Swedish universities. This gives opportunities of collegial exchange among teachers. Co-operation with industry in master degree projects is important and lays the ground for industry to recruit new colleagues.PhD students benefit from courses where they not only learn from senior researchers but also interact with each other. Such courses gives PhD students an overview of previous and present LCA-related research. This contributes to making research more scientific in the sense that the accumulation of knowledge will be more systematic. It helps establish a network of researchers that benefit their research and careers.Industry and authorities are in need to understand the LC-perspective. Not only environmental experts, but also several functions such as procurement, product development and marketing. It is important to offer education for professionals where they learn the basics of LCT, identify what value chain they are part of and how they can influence its performance.LC-practitioners needs to continue receiving updates and learn about new findings within the field. Seminars, webinars, newsletters and working groups are ways to stay up to date.There is a need to spread LCT within each organization, educate media via easily available information and inform citizens about the LC-perspective to ensure the regrowth of LC-experts of tomorrow.