To make strategic decisions on how a company can have a more positive impact on the environment, buy-in from the highest level is important. Executive Level & Strategic ManagementĬhief Sustainability Officers are still a relatively new position, but more and more companies understand that sustainability isn’t a topic that can be solved with simple greenwashing. Based on the generated insights, you can see where you already have an edge over your competitors – and where your company can use opportunities to become more sustainable.
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Today, more than 81 % of consumers feel that companies should help improve the environment.įor marketing and sales, this means understanding how sustainable your products are – and how to communicate this to your customers.Ī Life Cycle Assessment is the most vital step on that journey. A Life Cycle Assessment can give anyone working in Supply Chain Management or Procurement actionable insights into which company they should source from. That means that sourcing from different suppliers can have a massive impact on your product footprint.įor Supply Chain Managers, choosing the right supplier is often a hard decision, where far more factors than just price play a role. In many industries, the supply chain accounts for more than 80 % of the environmental impact. One use case for an LCA might be that R&D compares two different materials and how these different materials influence the environmental impact of the end product. This can be for many reasons – corporate policy, regulations, customer demand – but oftentimes, it simply means being more efficient with company resources. New products should be as low in emissions as possible. To comply with these regulations, or optimizing existing products so they comply in the future, can be important for the product department. These tenders require companies to disclose the environmental data of their products – and you would have to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment for that.Ī company that provides asphalt for a public road-building project might, for example, needs to provide the environmental footprint of that product to take part in that tender. In some countries, there are standardized tenders for public projects. Often, companies need to simply comply with regulations to continue doing business. There are two reasons why a Life Cycle Assessment can be interesting for product management.
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Product Management / Research & Development (R&D) According to our data, these are the users we see the most often.
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The following 4 departments in your company can take action based on an LCA right away. If you think about who might be interested in knowing more about the impact of your company, you could probably name everybody.įor example, HR managers might argue that potential candidates find it interesting to know more about the environmental footprint of their future employer.īut LCA is a very specific analysis. It provides the groundwork for any sustainability or CSR strategy within a company because you can only make decisions on things you’ve actually measured before. This is why the Life Cycle Assessment provides a framework for measuring the impact of, for example, a product.Ī Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analysis of the impact one object has on the world around it.īefore we dive into how a Life Cycle Assessment works, let’s break down who needs it in the first place.
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We just don’t know which factors we need to take a closer look at for a full footprint analysis! How did the goods get transported? Via truck, rail, or airplane?.How do my goods get produced? What about heating, water, ventilation?.Which raw materials were involved in the production process, and where do they come from? What about soil, seeds, fertilizer?.How environmentally friendly were the products you have just bought? Should I have bought the tomatoes from The Netherlands or from Spain?īut answering this question isn’t easy – because there are countless factors involved: You have probably asked yourself that question many times (sometimes without even knowing it) – for example in the supermarket:
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This is, in a nutshell, the question that a Life Cycle Assessment tries to answer. Activity-Based Footprinting What environmental impact does one object have on the world?