Green Tutorial:
Green Tutorial: |
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Based on life cycle thinking |
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A product life cycle refers to all processes involved from extraction of raw materials through raw material refining, product manufacturing, distribution and final recycling or disposal of the product. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool-set used to map and assess all environmental interventions caused by the product in the entire life cycle.
Product Oriented Environmental Management is all about to incorporate life cycle thinking in any relevant aspect of your daily routines. Focus should be shifted to the environmental burdens in the entire product life cycle rather than just focusing on your own production. The latter is usual in traditional environmental management.
Product Oriented Environmental Management can be seen as a tool for implementing LCA findings and strategies in the entire organisation. If relevant, product orientation may be implemented in:
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Figure 1. Tools and responsibilities of the organisation.
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Figure 1 outlines responsibilities and tools of the individual functions (from 'Håndbog i produktorienteret miljøarbejde')
Product orientation in practice should mainly be conducted in the individual departments. Coordination, however, incl. tool development and education is naturally located in the environmental department, see figure 1 and Organizational Responsibilities. It is important to stress that product orientation activities have to be coordinated in order to avoid suboptimisation.
It is usually necessary and recommendable to base product oriented environmental management on some kind of LCA. However, it is important to stress that it is not necessary to conduct a full and detailed LCA in order to start up. The recommendation is to start up in a simple fashion and extend to the level necessary for the decisions that the LCA is going to support, see also Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
In addition, product orientation activities should be initiated in those departments, which have the main influence on the environmental load (directly or indirectly) of the product.
Product orientation necessitates dialogue in the product chain - in principal from the initial extraction of raw materials to the final product disposal. In practice, however, any start up usually increases dialogue with your direct suppliers and customers. The dialogue may with time - and if necessary - be further expanded. The increased product chain dialogue can potentially lead to exploration of new market segments and thereby win-win situations.
On the EU-level these matters are being discussed under the term "Integrated Product Policy", and the initiatives of the Commission in order to promote the product oriented environmental thinking can be seen here.
A Handbook (in Danish) dealing with the issue in depth and with many illustrative examples can be found here.
LCA tools: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Suboptimisation refers to the situation were optimisation in one part of the product life cycle causes even larger environmental burdens in another part, whereby the total environmental burdens in the life cycle increases. This is of course undesirable and should be avoided by looking on a product from a holistic point of view.
Example: The production department introduces a new material, which makes it possible to reduce energy consumption for cabinet processing by 10%. However, the new material cannot be recycled when the cabinet is disposed off. The new material therefore creates a new waste disposal problem in another life cycle phase.
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