Environmental life cycle assessment as a tool for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems (EMS) part 1: methodology

The aspects identification procedure should lead to selection of as many elements of an organisation’s operations which potentially can react with the environment as possible. Moreover, in order to retain the coherency in the planning stage, it should be possible to cover the identified aspects with a common assessment procedure. When discussing the use of LCA for this purpose, it has to be mentioned that in order to enable assessment of aspects, they should be of quantitative character and should be captured in a way suitable for LCA analyses. Based on the data in Table 2, the identification stage of environmental aspects in EMS is included mainly in the phases 1 and 2 of LCA. It comes as a reflection of the fact that aspects are identified with environmental interventions and LCI data. EMS identifies aspects related to past, current and planned operations of an organisation. It does not, however, seem to be an issue from the point of view of LCA, taking into account that these assessments can be of retrospective or prospective character. As per ISO 14001 and 14004, aspects which are subject to identification related to normal, special and emergency conditions of an organisation’s operations. Partly and nondirectly, these elements are usually included in LCA, e.g. consequences of equipment defects and their repairs, production downtime related to changeover or restarting of production line etc. There are, however, aspects which are typical for EMS, which traditionally are not mentioned in LCA, e.g. sudden accidents and fires.

It is possible to capture elements related to normal and special conditions. It seems, however, problematic to do so with emergency situations (often bearing a high environmental risk). The main barrier seems to be the ability to express these aspects in a quantitative way. Even if they could be estimated, the results will bear significant uncertainty. A good example is a fire occurring in an emergency situation. Sample environmental aspects occurring in this case include: emissions to air, water and soil as well as waste. A qualitative identification of these among the aspects is possible and practiced. However, in order to include these elements in an assessment of impact compliant with LCIA methodology, they should be assigned as specific values, which seems problematic from many points of view. First of all, to assess the type and content of emission and waste, we would have to specifically describe what had been affected by the fire, since the combustion and decomposition products depend on the type of the material that had been burnt. Moreover, the quantity of the material, which had been damaged, should be identified, and a breakdown into various environmental media into which the substances are emitted should be made. It is possible to create scenarios like this, based on the structure and type of the used materials and the operations of an organisation; however, the results will always bear high uncertainty. In theory, it would be possible to base it on historical data. However, emergency situations do not seem to be of repetitive or cyclical character (contrary to normal and special conditions), so historical data might not be found useful. It seems that within the identification stage, it should be the priority to strive to identify the most number of aspects. The lack of possibility of expressing them in a quantitative way will surely make it impossible at a later stage for them to be assessed with the use of LCIA. It cannot be, however, treated as a disqualifying factor with regard to identification stage, because that way an organisation might omit significant or even key environmental issues. In the light of the above, all efforts must be made in order to collect quantitative data, because it will make the information based on LCA more complete. In the process of identification, it would be valuable to use some of the elements compliant with LCA methodology. The analyses carried out by the authors show the use of a functional unit beneficial as it combines two criteria of aspects assessments: frequency and quantity.

Moreover, aspects might include such issues, which are usually omitted in EMS, like land use and transformation (not limited to special or emergency conditions, but also used in normal operations), identifying of transport factors, taking into account the recycling and waste management in the process of the final disposal (not limited to waste management within an organisation).

A significant issue, from the point of view of identifying aspects, is focusing attention in LCA on breaking the system down into unit processes. In environment management systems, such a divide operates to some stage. When scrutinising ISO 14004 guidelines, it looks like the areas where it is recommended to identify aspects, are not only those geographically correlated with an organisation (design and development, production processes, packaging, transport, waste management, natural environment and biodiversity) but also the ones which are beyond its boundaries: the effects of the environmental policies and practices of manufacturers and suppliers, extraction and distribution of raw materials and natural resources, distribution, use and waste management. From this point of view, a distinction between direct and indirect environmental aspects is important. Direct environmental aspects are associated with activities, products and services of the organisation itself over which it has direct management control and they can be controlled by internal management decisions (EMAS guidance document 06). Indirect aspects concern the actual or potential activities over which the organisation can be expected to have an influence, but no control. If use LCA in EMS, identifying and capturing the “ecological burdens” related to both indirect, as well as direct aspects, can be possible, which has the key meaning especially in EMAS.

Likewise, a general division into input and output-related environmental aspects could be helpful. LCA is input–output analysis, which strongly determines a mode of conducting and organizing a study (data collection, model validation, interpretation of the results). Meanwhile in EMS, input–output thinking is not obvious, rather intuitional, and without clear methodological implications. The input-related aspects include as well as input elementary flows (land occupation, deposits of fossil fuels and metal ores, oxygen from air) and inputs from technosphere (electricity, plastics, petrol). Similarly, output-related aspects embrace output elementary flows (emissions to the air, water and soil) and outputs to the technosphere (products, waste for treatment). The set up with regard to inputs and outputs of aspects identification procedure would enable balancing of data and verifying the correctness and completeness of a model. In any of the analysed registers, the input and output-related aspects could not be balanced because of omitting the elements related to them, which traditionally would be taken into account in LCA (e.g. use of fuel in transport processes requires collecting of data with regard to air use, emission and wastage).

Another issue, which ought to be considered, is the quality of data. In LCA, contrary to EMS, different techniques for estimating and expressing data quality and uncertainties are available (Huijbregts et al. 2001; Ciroth 2004). It seems that using this experience in EMS would be valuable. Since using LCA to carry out this assessment would increase the requirements with regard to time and the complexity of the procedure, it seems that other compromise solutions ought to be sought. Since the implementation of EMS compliant with ISO 14001 and EMAS guidelines is an internal decision of an organisation and it contributes to its internal improvements, there is no need to impose such high requirements, which function, e.g. with regard to the comparative assertions disclosed to the public. It seems to be recommended therefore to use some simplification by dividing the analysed system into two subsystems: foreground and background (Guinee et al. 2002). The primary data could be collected then for the foreground processes referred to direct environmental aspects, while all indirect environmental aspects could be treated as background processes with a possibility of using secondary data. As a consequence, the data collected within an organisation would be characterised by the highest quality (spatial, temporal and technological), and the data regarding indirect aspects could be generic, subject to thorough verification. When confronted with qualitative or semi-quantitative methods which are usually practiced, the uncertainty brought this way should not be higher. Carrying out of identification and assessment of aspects with the use of LCA requires more time and effort as the collected data is more detailed. To sum up, from the point of view of the environmental aspects identification stage, LCA can be used in this area but requires the above-described modification.

The second, not less significant stage, is the assessment of identified environmental aspects. In accordance with ISO14004, it is advised that the following assessment criteria are followed:

The criteria regarding assigning of meaning to environmental aspects can be used for both environmental aspects of an organisation, as well as related to them, impacts on the environment. The environmental criteria can be used for both environmental aspects and impacts, but majority of them find use in the latter.

Whilst developing the criteria, an organisation can set levels (or values) of meaning with regard to each criterion, e.g. based on the possible combinations of contribution (probability/frequency) and its consequences (seriousness and intensity). Some types of ranking scales can be helpful in describing a meaning, e.g. quantitatively with regard to numeric values or qualitatively with regard to levels like high, medium, low or non-significant. The considered use of LCA for assessment of aspects is with regard to environmental criterion. Assuming that all the criteria used by an organisation belong to the same point scale, then the results obtained based on LCA should be correlated with the accepted system of scoring and should enable the assessment of aspects while taking into account all the remaining indicators. Within the environmental criterion, the following ISO 14004 features are mentioned: scale, severity, duration of impact or type, size and frequency of environmental aspect. Table 3 shows the evaluation of LCA with regard to these guidelines.

Further to the information presented in Table 3, LCA meets all the requirements aimed at methodologies used in aspects assessments with regard to the environmental criterion. This stage is the equivalent to phase 3 in LCA analysis—life cycle impact assessment. LCA offers in this case a normalised and scientifically accepted methodology, offering a possibility to get repetitive results. With regard to the LCIA methodologies which are practiced, there are characterisation factors for a variety of environmental aspects, which are calculated based on an advanced modelling (fate analysis, exposure, effects and damage analysis). When confronted with the descriptive and qualitative methodologies used usually in EMS, it undoubtedly has advantages. With regards to the practiced procedures, environmental compartments affected by potential impact (air, water, soil) are taken into account, and the relation between aspect and environmental issues (climate change, aciditification, eutrophication) are made. It is however done in a descriptive and qualitative way concluded with a semi-quantitative scoring system. As mentioned previously, what seems to be an issue and somewhat a limitation in the use of LCA is qualitative aspects.

On one hand, they are the previously described issues related to emergency situation; on the other hand, however, are the strictly qualitative issues, e.g. planning and administrative decisions, the danger of serious environmental catastrophes or operations of a third party on an organisation’s premises. When practicing LCA regularly, some of the results of LCI cannot be measured by the impact assessment (qualitative character, lack of environmental data in LCIA). Such cases should be clearly documented and their contribution in creating the impact should be described. There is a risk (as in every case of LCA) that in the currently available LCIA and databases, there will be no relevant information regarding some of the identified aspects. In that case, even if the aspect has been expressed in a quantitative way, it will not be taken into account in LCIA calculations.

As previously mentioned, EMS contribute to internal improvements of an organisation. In that case, using LCA would be on a micro-scale and would have internal character. Moreover, in this use, the assessments are not comparative, since they include changes in time made with regard to one system (organisation). Therefore, it seems possible to use the weighing scores of LCIA and making decision on the single score level. What is more, such a solution towards the whole complexity of the procedure, time consumption with regard to gathering the data, ought to be recommended.

In the aspects assessment, also other criteria like legal requirements and relations with stakeholders are taken into consideration. The semi-quantitative methodologies used in practice are simple and easy solutions, which enable the assessment of all of the identified aspects with regard to the set criteria. If we were to use LCA in assessing aspects within the environmental criterion, then the obtained results should be integrated with the analysis carried out with the use of remaining criteria. We could therefore ask a question—how should LCIA results be classified and combined with the points rating.

In order to do that, the use of classification recommended in ISO 14044 with regard to the contribution analysis could be recommended. A presented proposal includes five ranges to which points can be assigned depending on the point scale used by an organisation to assess the environmental aspects (Table 4).

For example, taking into account that the assessment covers six of the identified aspects, and the base for the assessment are three criteria: legal requirements, stakeholders and environmental criterion, the results of the assessment with the use of LCA are shown in Table 5.

In presented case, the scale 0–3 has been agreed (where 0, nonsignificant; 3, very significant) and it has been assumed, that the aspect will be regarded as significant if the total sum of the points for all the criteria will equal to or is more than 3., It is worth mentioning that in EMS practice, every organisation might decide on the rules of the aspects assessment and the assessment criteria can differ from case to case.