Environmental Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle
A business imperative!
Environmental sustainability is not only the right thing to do for our future, it has become a business imperative – part of the "triple bottom line" composed of economic dimensions (profits) as well as environmental and social dimensions.
Indeed every activity a manufacturer performs has an impact on a social, economic and environmental level. Often, these impacts are not obvious or immediate. Many are hidden or indirect until one examines the complete lifecycle of the product manufactured.
Lifecycle Thinking
Product lifecycle thinking involves an active and systematic charting of each stage of a product's life:
- Product design: Designing products that reduce consumption across their entire life is where the greatest influence occurs on a product's lifecycle and environmental impact. That is why environmental stewardship must be an integral part of the development process, on par with cost, quality, and manufacturing.
- Raw materials: Responsibly and sustainably sourcing the raw materials used in product production and product packaging. Transportation of raw materials from the point of acquisition to the point of processing is also included in this stage.
- Manufacturing: Reducing the use of natural resources such as energy and water and the amount of waste generated and greenhouse gas emissions from production.
- Transportation: The mode of transportation used to distribute products, vehicles' fuel efficiencies and the locations of distribution facilities have an impact on a product's environmental footprint. So does product packaging. Fitting more product into a box, more boxes into a case, more cases onto a pallet and more pallets onto a truck helps to put fewer trucks on the road, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Use: Once the product is distributed, all activities associated with its useful life are included at this stage. This includes energy demands and environmental wastes from product storage and consumption. Superior product performance should help product users/customers use less and waste less.
- Final disposal: Using less product, with less packaging, means less trash is disposed of and sent to landfills.
Lifecycle Assessment
A product lifecycle assessment can assist companies on the road to sustainability by helping them understand the human health and environmental impacts of the products they manufacture. It is a technique that involves:
- Compiling an inventory of relevant material and energy inputs and environmental releases.
- Evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified inputs and releases.
- Interpreting the results to help product purchasers make informed decisions.
Lifecycle assessments are data-intensive. Data may be required for elements including raw materials; chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides; energy; physical inputs such as water; emissions to air, water and soil; products and co-products (process outputs that have value and are not treated as wastes, such as scrap); solid waste; and waste water. It is important for companies to also look at such data from their suppliers.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests that lifecycle assessments also help companies avoid the shifting of environmental issues from one place to another.
For example, when selecting between two rival products, it may appear that Option 1 is better for the environment because it generates less solid waste than Option 2. However, after performing a product lifecycle assessment it might be determined that Option 1 actually creates larger cradle-to-grave environmental impacts when measured across air, water and land. For example, it may cause more chemical emissions during the manufacturing stage. Therefore, Option 2 (which produces solid waste) may be viewed as producing less cradle-to-grave environmental harm or impact than Option 1 because of its lower chemical emissions.
Conclusion
An environmentally sustainable product is not simply one that can be recycled or one that contains the most recycled content. By applying lifecycle thinking, manufacturers can consider the environmental impacts of products throughout their entire life – from initial design to final disposal.
