As industry moves toward a world of extended producer responsibility (EPR) in which ownership of products becomes less common and product leasing and service provisioning become more pervasive, it is increasingly important to develop frameworks for assessing the environmental impacts of the service industry. In this paper, we use streamlined life cycle assessment to compare the environmental impacts of a residential air conditioning unit with a proposed "conditioned air" service. When the entire life cycle is considered, the assessments indicate that the service option is environmentally preferable. By making the producer ultimately responsible for product repair and "take-back," the service option creates incentives for the producer to design air conditioning units and their packaging for recovery, remanufacture, and recycling. This in turn minimizes the need for new raw materials and component parts. EPR also helps to ensure responsible unit maintenance and repair, which reduces chemical and oil dissipation into the environment. Public policy actions that provide incentives for EPR may therefore prove to be environmentally beneficial.
Superior environmental performance has not traditionally been a goal of managers of power generating facilities, but there is now considerable pressure to go "beyond compliance," even for facilities that have been in existence for decades. In this regard, significant environmental improvement can be achieved by taking a life-cycle perspective. We have conducted a streamlined life-cycle assessment on an existing gas/oil-fired generating facility. With the results of this assessment as a basis, we propose a number of generic steps that can be taken to improve the environmental performance of most existing power generating facilities.
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