Life Cycle Assessment of a company: e-tool to quantify the environmental performances

Keywords:
Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Management, Life Cycle Costing

Abstract:
Today companies have to face an increasing pressure concerning their environmental performances due to stricter environmental legislations, public opinion, NGOs or insurance carriers. Several analytical tools have been developed to provide technical information for environmental decision support: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), etc. Nevertheless, there is the need for an analytical tool purposely developed for companies to quantify the environmental impacts of their activities, inputs, products and wastes through the entire life cycle, but avoiding the expert knowledge that LCA usually requires; a tool allowing the comparison of processes, products and life-cycle steps as well as enabling companies benchmarking. Firms often employ in-house methods based on qualitative criteria without looking at life cycle burdens of their products and services. Green-e is an innovative LCA web-based analytical tool fulfilling this need and aimed to become a standard for companies environmental assessment, to be systematically used in the frame of procedural tools such as Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Environmental Performance Evaluations (EPE). The tool combines life cycle oriented environmental and cost assessments for quantified and integrated eco-efficiency analysis, enabling companies to identify economically advantageous improvement opportunities.

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Nanotech 2007 Conference Program Abstract