Ecometrics for life cycle management: A conflict between sustainable development and family values?

Metrics are a prerequisite for the successful monitoring and management of progress toward goals. Within the context of sustainable development these "values” are stakeholder dependent with the interests of the individual, society, the environmental infrastructure and intergenerational liability differing significantly. These stakeholder priorities may also be mutually inconsistent or simultaneously unattainable. Therefore, a set of scale- and value-specific indicators will he required to represent the priorities of individuals, religious organizations, political and public interest groups, non-government organizations, firms and industry associations, as well as national and international institutions. Restricting the number of ecometrics, or creating aggregated sustainability indicators, risks disenfranchisement and ivalidation respectively. Over the past three decades a series ofmicroecometrics have been developed to account for the impact of human activity, technology or products over regional, national, and sub-continental scales. These include life cycle energy consumption, dematerialization, waste minimization, as well as design for environment and eco-efficiency indicators, the latter two combining technological or economic aspects respectively with environmental factors.Metrics which evaluate the impact of a service, or the utility provided by a product, are lacking. A series of global measures, or macroecometrics have also been defined and include the average annual temperature as well as atmospheric compositions and concentrations, sea level, and earth based resources such as topsoil quantities. The validity of microecometrics as measures of global phenomena can be established through life cycle impact assessments which evaluate the "system's” response to effects of products or services throughout their life cycle. However, the link between microecometrics and macroecometrics, their validity as indicators of sustainability, the subjectivity of sustainable developmentper se as a value, and the relationship of metrics and sustainable development with family values has not extensively been addressed. This paper summarizes recently proposed ecometrics, calls for the recognition of the subjectivity of indicators, the distinction between ecometrics used for internal corporate reporting and external decision making, and the establishment of a representative multistakeholder debat

Life cycle profit optimization a business opportunity

Life Cycle Profitability combines financial data, and forecasts, with market research to guide pricing decisions and to evaluate the cash flow consequences of goods and services. The ratio of direct and indirect costs, as well as the premium customers are willing to pay for "green” products, provide a quantitative means to identify business and environmental opportunities. Life Cycle Profitability is developed to fit into existing organizational structures permitting firms to protect asset value, reduce legal defense and liability costs, quantify make-or-buy decisions, and aid in ecodesign and new product introduction. It aims at the interface between accounting, legal, marketing, production and EHS divisions. This paper develops "Life Cycle Profitability” as a tool based on measurables which exist within organizations. In this sense, Life Cycle Profitability is an evolutionary means to conduct business practice under scenarios where envirotechnical imperatives compliment short term financial necessities and strategic planning initiatives. The author aims to demonstrate that Life Cycle Profitability is a more meaningful method, and indicator, than non-cost based ecometrics and can compliment the qualitative continuous improvement accounting methods advocated by EMS and ISO 14000 standards, as well as by the Integrated Product Policy initiativ

Return on environment: An objective indicator to validate life cycle assessments?

The Return on Environment (ROE) is developed, and tested, as an objective indicator to support the results of Life Cycle Assessments. It is based on the observation that a ratio of life cycle costs incurred throughout the extraction, transport, manufacturing, use and disposal stages, to the selling price, appears to scale linearly with a quantitative impact assessment. ROE is therefore a normalization method which permits comparison of new assessments with existing data, even from products with quite different characteristics. It can, alternatively, be applied to estimate either the life cycle cost, or quantify environmental impact, provided the other is known. Like its economic cousin, the return on investment, cases studied typically have ROEs in over the range of 2-20%. ROE is intended as a preliminary estimation method, akin to engineering costing, which has a precision of +-30%. As such, it can be used to rapidly determine if a more detailed cost assessment can be justified and, if so, where the efforts should be oriented. ROE is a measurable life cycle index intended to render LCAs more suitable for decision making. A further benefit that ROE provides is the guidance to a life cycle practitioner, or product development team, to assess if sufficient data has been collected, or if costs and impacts have been over or under-estimated. It has advantages over specific ecoindicators, such as manufacturing energy or waste emissions, which are both product specific and subjective. The Return on Environment also serves as a systematic index for reporting improvements or as a relative environmental ratin

EcoDesign and LCA survey of current uses of environmental attributes in product and process development

A survey of designers was carried out to determine to what extent environmental information was being used in the development of products and processes. Twenty-seven designers in five industry categories (process, manufacturing, electronics, construction and automobile) reported mean product design times varying generally from twelve to thirty months. "Ecodesign” generally focused on the manufacturing, use and disposal stages of the product life cycle with material selection, emissions, energy, and recyclability for the principal environmental information employed. Approximately one half of the designers also reported the use of a typical life cycle impact parameter in their product development, with another one-third utilizing stressors including groundwater pollution, ozone depletion and global warming. A full 85% of the designers considered environmental parameters in their work generally as the result of a corporate policy with larger firms able to influence designers to a greater extent. The willingness to combine technical and economic parameters with environmental attributes was greater for non-durable products and designs involving less than two years. Specific preferences of designers within certain product and process groups are discussed. Designers considered electronic tools, with written documentation, as the most appropriate means to implement Ecodesign. A strong minority of the design have been limited to less than two days for the consideration of environmental information, implying the need to integrate life cycle assessment with validated ecometrics, if significant advances are to be made toward sustainable developmen

Salt concentration influence on the efficiency of two cationic polymeric flocculants

The influence of the increase of the solution ionic strength on the flocculation of charged latex particles in the presence of cationic polymers is reported. Empirical flocculation rate constants are experimentally determined using particle counting and for two cationic polymers, one linear and the second with two branches. Comparisons are made with a solution containing monovalent salt only at different ionic concentrations in the absence of polymers. In all cases, polymer-induced flocculation is significantly more efficient than charge screening effects using salt only. Analysis of zeta potential measurements indicates that the charge neutralization and surface charge variations dictate the stability of the latex suspensions. Moreover, the addition of a small amount of salt in the polymer-particle mixtures results in a dramatic decrease of the polymer efficiency which is more pronounced for the linear polymeric flocculant. By increasing further the ionic strength, the rates of polymer flocculation are found to increase again but remain smaller than in the absence of sal