Page 248 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

236 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

they contain information on production processes and proprietary materials
that they do not want competitors to have. Also, the purpose of the LCA is to
inform business decisions. Since those buying the products do not read scien-
tific journals, less complex information on the products is provided through
other media.
In 2001 and 2010, P&G compiled the results of LCAs for several kinds of
consumer products that it makes. Figure 10.1 shows the Cumulative Energy
Demands for those product categories. LCA results can be used to identify
the most impactful products and life cycle phases for sustainable innovation
changes.
Note the large bar for the energy use by consumers of laundry detergent.
The most significant impact that P&G can have to reduce energy use across all
product types and life cycle phases is to make an effective product available
for households to wash their clothes in unheated water. This insight led P&G
to develop new formulations for 'cold water' laundry detergents, Tide® and
Ariel®, which were launched in North America and Europe in 2007.
Although the cold water laundry detergents are on shelves in many coun-
tries, changing people's habits is not easy. To reduce the costs and impacts
of raw materials and transportation, P&G introduced concentrated laundry
detergents in 1997 in both Western Europe and North America. European
consumers accepted concentrated detergents in smaller packages and sales
continued uninterrupted to today. However, many U.S. consumers saw
a smaller concentrated detergent being sold at the same price as larger,

Figure 10.1 Results of multiple LCAs show the different cumulative energy demand (billions
of MJ) of 13 product types sold in North America and Western Europe, and focuses attention
on where innovation would be most helpful to reduce energy use.