Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems (EMS)

Abstract

Purpose The paper presents a discussion on the possibilities of using LCA in identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems based on the requirements of the international ISO14001 standard and the European Union EMAS regulation. Some modifications of LCA methodology are proposed in Part 1 while the results of a review of environmental aspects for 36 organisations with implemented EMS are presented in Part 2 of the article. Materials and methods The scope of the systems analysed in EMS and in LCA is different. This comes as the result of the fact that both ISO 14001 and EMAS are focused on an organisation on contrary to ISO14040x which are focused on a product life cycle. For the present work, this resulted in a need of adjusting the LCA methodology to EMS specificity and vice versa. Some suggestions of such modifications are presented and discussed in the paper. Results A preliminary analysis was carried out on 36 organisations which have environmental management systems compliant with the ISO14001 or EMAS regulations. A certain disproportion between input and output related environmental aspects included in most of the analysed registers was found. The probable reasons for such disproportion could be the fact that the output related environmental aspects are easier to manage by organisation and are often regulated by laws. Legal requirements are a significant criterion in the environmental aspects assessment. Discussion Based on the assessments carried out and the observations made, some conclusions have been drawn with regard to weaknesses and strengths and usefulness of LCA, as a result of a comparison to the traditional approaches used in EMS in the discussed area. LCA has evident advantages like: standardised methodology, possibility of inclusion of the quantitative information, presence of some methodological steps enabling the verification of the collected data, and ability to generate of reproducible results. At the same time, the following potential weak points can be observed: a complexity of the procedure, higher time, and cost requirements (especially related to an inventory phase); difficulties with assessing of environmental aspects with the qualitative character and these related to emergency situations; and limitation related to the lack of relevant characterisation factors in the currently used life cycle impact assessment methods. Conclusions LCA ought to be considered as a tool used for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems. The listed limitations do not disqualify its suitability to be used. After certain simplifications, LCA seems to be a valuable alternative to the methodologies currently in use.

LCA as an element in environmental management systems—comparison of conditions in selected organisations in Poland, Sweden and Germany

“…In the case of identification and assessment of environmental aspects in EMS, less emphasis is probably put on quantitative data and their completeness. The opinions of the companies studied seem to correlate with observations made during the work already undertaken (Lewandowska 2011;Lewandowska et al 2011) where potential strong and weak points of LCA were discussed in the context of EMS. LCA can be recognised as too time consuming in comparison with less complicated and "quicker" traditional approaches like, for example, point estimation methods.…”

“…In practice, environmental problems are defined in a general sense and rather ambiguously since this level of detail is sufficient in the context of qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques commonly used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects. Additionally, LCA also permits the inclusion of indirect environmental aspects (if quantitative), which can be especially valuable in organisations using EMAS (Lewandowska et al 2011). All 85 of the companies analysed indicated a proportion of indirect aspects among the total number of environmental aspects and the survey noted the following results: Germany about 25 %, Poland about 21 % and Sweden about 41 %.…”

Eco-design as a normative element of Environmental Management Systems—the context of the revised ISO 14001:2015

“…The Revision of ISO 14001: Key changes proposed in the March 2013 Draft prepared by CRA Europe (Leehane 2013) makes a reference to LCA as a tool, which can be used within the framework of eco-design. The use of LCA seems to have several advantages in the context of EMS (Zobel et al 2002;Millet et al 2007;Lewandowska 2011;Lewandowska et al 2011). Primarily, it makes it possible to realise eco-design processes in a repeatable, measurable (quantitative) way, based on normalised methods and with the access to calculation supporting databases and software packages.…”

Energy analysis to assess the environmental sustainability of the dairy chain

“…In spite of the fact that the LCA method represents a tool that has been generally accepted by the scientific community, some limitations to this methodology can be identified, the main ones being complexity and costs in terms of time and resources (Eide and Ohlsson, 1998;Brentrup et al, 2004;Reap et al, 2008;Brenton et al, 2009;Hospido et al, 2010;Lewandowska et al, 2011).…”