Page 53 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

4 LCA Applications 35

(Meylan et al. 2014). In Sweden LCA was used to assess environmental impacts of
introducing waste incineration tax, considered to “encourage waste reduction and
increase materials recycling and biological treatment” (Björklund and Finnveden
2007). While the proposed design of such a tax would result in increased recycling,
the LCA found that this would lead to only small environmental improvements.
Thus, it was proposed that the design of the tax should include the fossil carbon
content of the waste. Such examples can also be found outside Europe. In the United
States, the California Oil Recycling Enhancement Act was initiated in 2009 to
support management of used oil and support selection of least-polluting options
(refining and reuse, distillation or combustion with energy recovery) by the state
(Reed 2012). This act “requires that the Department of Resources Recycling and
Recovery coordinate, with input from representatives of all used oil stakeholders, a
comprehensive life cycle assessment of California’s used lubricating and industrial
oil management process” (CalRecycle 2012).

4.3 Industry Perspective

The application of LCA in enterprises can be classified into five main purposes:
(i) decision support in product and process development; (ii) marketing purposes
(e.g. Eco-labelling); (iii) development and selection of indicators used in moni-
toring of environmental performance of products or plants; (iv) selection of sup-
pliers or subcontractors; and (v) strategic planning (Huang and Hunkeler 1995;
Bültmann 1997; Hanssen 1999; Baumann 2000; Heiskanen 2000; Frankl and Rubik
2000; Ekvall 2012). We note that LCA applications within industry may well serve
more than one purpose, and often the same LCA can be used for different purposes
within acompany (e.g. product development is often combined with marketing
efforts). Furthermore, as experience with using LCA grows in an enterprise, one
application can trigger another (e.g. insights gained from an LCA into product
environmental performance can lead to decisions about selection of suppliers or
setting strategies). We also note that although LCA has traditionally been developed
as a tool to be used at product level, and is still used as such, there is an increasing
interest in using LCA at the corporate level to reflect the performance of the
company or individual plants in a life cycle perspective. This is particularly relevant
for (but not limited to) large enterprises and for applications related to monitoring of
environmental performance and strategic planning.

4.3.1 Applications at Product Level

At product level, LCA is often used during product development and for identifying
environmental hotspots of a product or process either within the organization or in
its supply chain. For instance, a survey showed that the German industry in the