LCA as an element in environmental management systems—comparison of conditions in selected organisations in Poland, Sweden and Germany

As indicated in part 1 of this two-part paper, the size of the total population was assumed to be 13,061 and was determined as the number of organisations with ISO 14001 and/or an Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) certificate operating in Germany, Poland and Sweden (as at 2009). The size of the sample was assumed to be 10 % of the population and a number of questionnaires sent to organisations in each of the three countries analysed was proportional to its share in the total population (Germany 55.68 %, Sweden 32.67 % and Poland 11.63 %). One thousand three hundred six questionnaires were sent and there were 85 correctly completed and returned questionnaires in total (Poland 35, Germany 26 and Sweden 24).

Table 5 below presents short characteristics of ten organisations (five Swedish and five German) using LCA for identification and/or assessment of environmental aspects in EMS. Two German companies, despite declaring the fact of using of LCA, did not complete the second part of the survey, justifying their decision on the basis of company policy and confidentiality of data. As regards the above, responses to the second part of the survey were obtained from only eight organisations.

As there are few such organisations, it is difficult to make any generalisations and search for correlations. These are mainly medium or large companies operating in various sectors and having environmental management systems complying with the requirements of ISO 14001 or the EMAS regulation. As has already been mentioned, they would prefer to use a package of tools. There was only one Swedish organisation that confirmed using LCA as the only method of assessment of environmental aspects. It is worth emphasising that in only one of the organisations analysed was that the person filling out the questionnaire is a specialist in LCA (see Table 5).

The first of the questions to which the organisations analysed responded related to software used for LCA. German companies reported using GaBi software, whereas Swedish companies used Excel or GaBi (one organisation uses the two tools jointly). The next question related to elements of the methodology and the levels of LCA results used by organisations for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects. The results are presented in Table 6. All eight organisations use the idea of a functional unit during identification of environmental aspects. There are three Swedish organisations and one German organisation that also use a division of the system into unit processes. Allocation procedures, validation of the processes through balance and the use of cutoff criteria were only indicated by Swedish companies. In most cases, aspects are assessed through the use of the environmental profile, whereas three Swedish organisations and one German organisation also use cumulative results of, e.g. eco-indicators, for these purposes.

The last question was related to the assessment of LCA as a tool used for this particular purpose. Representatives of the organisations analysed were to describe their LCA on the basis of their experience, by indicating its strong points and its weak points as compared to traditional methods used for the identification and assessment of aspects in EMS. There were eight representatives of the organisations analysed who answered this question. The results are presented in Table 7. Representatives of the organisations analysed could choose between four answers (definitely yes, rather yes, rather no, and definitely no) for each of the LCA characteristics. The results presented in Table 7 show that the organisations analysed using LCA in EMS are convergent in the majority of strong points of LCA as compared to traditional methods used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects. Representatives of the organisations analysed indicated positive answers to the exclusion of others such as “definitely yes” and “rather yes” in relation to such characteristics of LCA as the possibility of determining potential impacts caused by environmental aspects on the basis of scientifically established and widely accepted impact modelling methodology; the possibility of including the life cycle perspective; getting qualitative results and covering several elements concerning the environmental aspects (size, frequency and type) by one methodology. Among the strong points mentioned, the general availability of software used for LCA aroused most doubts. The lowest result was obtained for potential weak points of LCA such as time-consuming analysis, which is, theoretically, higher than in the case of the application of simpler and less methodologically advanced tools. Two organisations stated that the time-consuming nature of LCA analysis should not be perceived as a weak point, whereas four other companies answered “rather yes”. A relatively high accordance among the bodies analysed (71.43 % of the organisations completing this part of the questionnaire) was obtained for features of LCA such as lack of possibility to cover one common methodology, the quantitative and qualitative environmental aspects. Representatives of the organisations analysed also agreed and indicated both complexity of LCA and higher costs as weak points of the technique in comparison with traditional methods of identification and assessment of environmental aspects.

The organisations studied, regardless of country, are dominated by qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques of assessment and identification of environmental aspects. The methods used for identification and assessment of environmental aspects as shown in the surveys are different from LCA to such an extent that it should be assumed that the organisations involved and their environmental managers are so accustomed to traditional qualitative and semi-quantitative solutions that they would not be prepared for the understanding and adoption of different approaches such as LCA. Another issue studied included forms of validation and verification of the completeness of data collected for identification of environmental aspects. In LCA research, LCI and LCIA analyses typically have a quantitative nature and, therefore, apart from procedural techniques, a series of numerical approaches to the analysis and assessment of data are adopted (Guinée et al. 2002). For example, in the practice of LCA, LCI model and inventory data are often validated by making mass and energy balances of unit processes and any exclusion can be justified and preceded by, e.g. sensitivity analyses. In the case of identification and assessment of environmental aspects in EMS, less emphasis is probably put on quantitative data and their completeness.

The opinions of the companies studied seem to correlate with observations made during the work already undertaken (Lewandowska 2011; Lewandowska et al. 2011) where potential strong and weak points of LCA were discussed in the context of EMS. LCA can be recognised as too time consuming in comparison with less complicated and “quicker” traditional approaches like, for example, point estimation methods. However, the representatives of the organisations analysed declared their readiness to accept that the identification and assessment processes for environmental aspects take even longer, which represents an opportunity for LCA. The strong point of LCA is the higher environmental relevance of the results obtained since environmental impact can be assessed in a more comprehensive way. The use of LCA for the assessment of environmental aspects in EMS would make it possible to assess the problems in the context of the entire environmental profile including several environmental problems. More precise understanding and definition of environmental problems that are precisely defined in LCA would represent a significant novelty for those environmental managers using traditional approaches. In practice, environmental problems are defined in a general sense and rather ambiguously since this level of detail is sufficient in the context of qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques commonly used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects. Additionally, LCA also permits the inclusion of indirect environmental aspects (if quantitative), which can be especially valuable in organisations using EMAS (Lewandowska et al. 2011). All 85 of the companies analysed indicated a proportion of indirect aspects among the total number of environmental aspects and the survey noted the following results: Germany about 25 %, Poland about 21 % and Sweden about 41 %. The indirect aspects were mostly defined in a descriptive way. If appropriate data was gathered (e.g. for transport processes made by an external logistic company), LCA would enable the enterprises to quantify them so that they could be covered by a common assessment method with direct aspects.

Due to the low return rate, the results obtained may only be applied to the organisations analysed and any generalisations drawn should be treated with caution.