LCAs in the telecommunication sector
September 12, 2016Andreas Kröhling, Senior Expert for Corporate Responsibility at “Deutsche Telekom AG” recommends just getting started and keeping at it! Even simply recognizing the most important areas to focus on will help you to systematically reach a better bottom line for your environmental balance. Enjoy the interview! How do you respond when your Telekom colleagues ask you "why we make life cycle assessm...
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Interview with “Germany’s most sustainable large-scale enterprise 2014”
September 12, 2016Marko Schnarr works for the environmental office at Miele, the well-known manufacturer of household appliances. His goal is to expand the company’s decision-making matrix to fully include environmental aspects. Enjoy the interview! What do you respond when you are asked by Miele colleagues, for example from the Production department, “why do we conduct life cycle assessments at Miele”? Our customers expect products from us that are first-class in every aspect. This also applies to our environmental responsibility. But what this means in practice is often not as easy to answer. Saving energ...
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LCA database provider ecoinvent provides exclusive insights
April 20, 2016 2 CommentsThe ecoinvent Centre in Switzerland and thinkstep AG based in Stuttgart, Germany offer background databases for Life Cycle Assessment. The GaBi databases and the ecoinvent database are the market leaders in this field. I am grateful for the willingness to participate in the following short interview on LCA databases shown by Dr. Gregor Wernet, Executive Manager, at the ecoinvent Centre. We receive exclusive insights, among others, into upcoming developments and learn about the vision of how the ecoinvent database may look like in 5 years from now. Dr....
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Tips and expertise shared by three experienced users of LCA Databases
April 20, 2016During the preparation of the article on LCA data and LCA databases it was a great experience to include the different perspectives on LCA data and LCA databases. Representing the perspective of data providers and their future plans Dr. Martin Baitz, Director Content at Thinkstep AG provided valuable insights for the GaBi databases and Dr. Gregor Wernet, Executive Manager at the ecoinvent Center provided valuable insights on the ecoinvent database. The user perspective is represented by experienced LCA data users, who share their experiences, challenges and tips when using LCA databases. Th...
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Datenbank-Anbieter thinkstep AG gibt exklusive Einblicke
April 19, 2016Die thinkstep AG aus Stuttgart und das ecoinvent Centre in der Schweiz bieten Hintergrund-Datenbanken, um die Datensuche für Ökobilanzen zu erleichtern. Die ecoinvent Datenbank und die GaBi-Datenbanken sind die Marktführer auf dem Gebiet. Ich bedanke mich für die Bereitschaft zu dem nachfolgenden Kurzinterview zu LCA-Datenbanken! Wir erhalten exklusive Einblicke u.a. in bevorstehende Neuerungen und dürfen teilhaben an der Vision, wie die Datenbanken in 5 Jahren aussehen sollen. Dr.-Ing. Martin Baitz, thinkstep AG, Stuttgart Was schätzen die GaBi-Daten-Anwen...
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Datenbank-Anbieter ecoinvent gibt exklusive Einblicke
April 19, 2016Das ecoinvent Centre in der Schweiz und die thinkstep AG aus Stuttgart bieten Hintergrund-Datenbanken, um die Datensuche für Ökobilanzen zu erleichtern. Die ecoinvent Datenbank und die GaBi-Datenbanken sind die Marktführer auf dem Gebiet. Ich bedanke mich für die Bereitschaft zu dem nachfolgenden Kurzinterview zu LCA-Datenbanken bei Dr. Gregor Wernet, Executive Manager beim ecoinvent Center. Wir erhalten exklusive Einblicke u.a. in bevorstehende Neuerungen und dürfen teilhaben an der Vision, wie die Datenbanken in 5 Jahren aussehen soll. Dr. Gregor Wernet, ecoinvent Centre, Züri...
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Success factor for Life Cycle Assessment: data, data, data
April 19, 2016When deciding to get started with Life Cycle Assessment you probably have come across the quote: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Therefore, your aim is to quantify the environmental impacts of your company or of one or several products with the objective to develop effective management strategies to reduce these impacts. Companies now utilise a range of environmental methods, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA), Carbon or Water Footprinting, Environmental Performance Monitoring, and more general Material and Energy Flow Analysis. Performing s...
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Erfolgsfaktor für Ökobilanzen (Life Cycle Assessment, LCA): Daten, Daten und nochmals Daten
April 19, 2016Wenn Sie planen, erstmals eine Ökobilanz zu erstellen, war vermutlich die folgende Management-Weisheit einer der Ausgangspunkte: „Man kann nur managen, was man messen kann“. Ihr Ziel ist es folglich, die ökologischen Auswirkungen Ihres Unternehmens oder eines oder mehrerer Ihrer Produkte zu quantifizieren, um dann effektive Managementstrategien zu entwickeln, die diese Auswirkungen reduzieren. Inzwischen nutzen Unternehmen ein ganzes Spektrum ökologischer Verfahren, wie etwa die Ökobilanz (Life Cycle Assessment, LCA), Materialflusskostenrechnung (Material Flow Cost Accounting, MFCA), die Bewer...
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Social Life Cycle Analysis: Why Does It Lurk In the Shadow of Environmental LCA?
December 17, 2015The term “Life Cycle Analysis” (LCA) is largely assumed to be the technique used for the assessment of the total environmental impact associated with a product or process. This assumption does, however, neglect the inclusion of the other sustainability pillars which form a total “Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment”— social and economic impacts. Making truly well-informed decisions for sustainable development requires the consideration of all three aspects. The dominance of Environmental Life Cycle Analysis (ELCA) in product assessment is partly owed to the development of Int...
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The greening of construction (Part III): Buildings Ratings tools in international context
May 8, 2014 3 CommentsIn the first article in this series a couple of weeks ago, I suggested that the trend towards sustainability in the construction sector was being driven by demand as the business case for green buildings becomes more widely appreciated by investors and tenants. This week, my aim is to survey the most widely used tools for determining a building’s sustainability in different regions and assess the extent to which there is an international harmonization of these green ratings tools. After all, there are over 600 such systems operating in the world today. Energy savings inherent in efficien...
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The greening of construction (Part II): International development of EPDs
May 1, 2014Unless you have been living under a rock, or on the wrong side of the digital divide in a slum, you will be aware that last week I introduced the idea of EPDs, or type III environmental declarations, in the construction sector. I asserted that they were a useful and important addition to the armory of measures that currently vie to push human society towards the much vaunted but elusive goal of sustainability. The construction sector is leading other industries internationally in the development of EPD schemes so perhaps offers some sort of template for the wider use of EPDs. The Internatio...
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The greening of construction (Part I): Overview
April 24, 2014 1 CommentIn recent years humankind reached a significant milestone when we became a predominantly urban species. This trend towards urbanization is part of the transition from agrarian to industrial society that is radically transforming our social metabolism and threatening the earth system. Although Northern Europe established this trend in the 18th century, it is currently most pronounced in the developing world. In China for example, where rural migrants have for decades been flooding urban spaces, construction spending amounted to $1.25 trillion in 2012. Yet most construction still occurs in ri...
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From footprints to handprints: clutching at straws?
April 17, 2014A couple of years ago TIME magazine rated Handprints among the “10 ideas that are changing your life”. This statement would tend to suggest that either your life is pretty stagnant or that maybe it is worth examining what the handprint hype is about. Has it changed our lives? Handprints are the converse of footprints. Where footprints carry negative connotations – generally about the burdens that humans place on “the environment” – handprints exude positivity. Take for example the narrative of the Positive Handprints Foundation. It assures us that handprints are all about the five Ps of sus...
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Product environmental footprinting: Harmonization or proliferation of standards?
March 20, 2014 3 CommentsLife cycle assessment (LCA) is a means of determining the environmental impact of a product, process or activity. It abstracts that “thing” from its surrounds and assesses its material interaction with the ecosystem in terms of particular impacts. Such impacts include climate, water, human health etc. With the burgeoning awareness in recent years of the unprecedented alterations that humanity is inflicting upon planet earth – especially its thermoregulatory system – demand has grown for LCA based product declarations: product environmental footprinting (PEF). The PEF World Forum defines a ...
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Making an LCA in 1 Hour – How to Get Going with Umberto
September 19, 2013 1 CommentSimaPro and GaBi are the most commonly used software tools to conduct a professional life cycle assessment. There is, however, a third solution in this field, one that is capable of not only calculating product life cycles, but also modeling and improving entire production systems. That integrative solution is called Umberto. While Umberto's extensive feature list may have initially confused some practitioners in the past, and the interface was sometimes deemed unintuitively technical, let me convince you in this article that the opposite is the actual case now. Especially since the launch of ...
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