Testing the Concepts: Examples from the Paper, Textile and Surface Treatment Industry

Page Last modified 20 Apr 2016

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Environmental Risk Assessment - Approaches, Experiences and Information Sources

Testing the Concepts: Examples from the Paper, Textile and Surface Treatment Industry

The following work is based on information from the EDIP unit process database and cleaner technology projects performed by the Institute for Product Development. The relevant data have been collected and hand-led following the principles in the EDIP method and in Chapter 4 of this report.

Due to the purpose of these case studies, information regarding the various stages of the product life cycle has been omitted. The final step of the valuation, weighting, will be shown, and the indicators at the life cycle assessment level are discussed.

The purpose of the cases is to document and illustrate:

That a cleaner technology should always be assessed both in the process dimension and the product dimension.
That the product dimension, i.e. the life cycle of the product, can be influenced by the technology and that this influence is often environmentally decisive.
How important the product dimension is, compared to the process dimension.
That environmental performance can be controlled by "technology specific indicators", which are the process parameters respectively the product parameters that are decisive to the environmental performance.

That such process parameters and product properties are easy to identify on the basis of sufficient technological and environmental knowledge of the technology, and that they are easy to use in the control of environmental performance. The cases thus illustrate the working principles described in Section 5.5 and illustrated in Figure 5.1, and demonstrate that these working principles can be applied in practice.

The EPIs used in the work with the cases are the EPIs of the EDIP method. These are not transformed to the level 0 and level 1 EPIs of the CEIDOCT concept. However, for the indicators of the focus areas M, E and C, the information to perform this transformation is present in the EDIP-EPIs as shown in the following diagram (ref. Figure 3.1):

Assessment parameters in the EDIP-method, related to the CEIDOCT-EPIs level 0 and 1 for focus areas M, E and C

	Environmental Impacts	Resource consumption	Impacts on the working environment
Materials Focus area M	Bulk waste Slag and ashes	Resources used in materials Mainly reversible consumption
Energy Focus area E	Global warming Photochemical ozone formation Acidification Nutrient enrichment Bulk waste Slag and ashes Nuclear waste	Energy carriers, especially fossil resources and wood. Mainly irreversible consumption.
Chemicals
Focus area C	Ozone depletion Photochemical ozone formation Persistent toxicity Ecotoxicity Human toxicity	Resources used in the production of chemicals	Impacts related to chemical exposure: cancer, damage to the reproductive system, allergy and damage to the nervous system
	Hazardous waste
Others			Monotonous repetitive work, noise, work accidents

Thus, direct relations exist between the EDIP-EPIs and the CEIDOCT focus areas M, E and C. For focus area B this is not the case as the biological resources area is not included in EDIP or any other present LCA-method. The B-indicators have not been sufficiently developed in this project to be calculated in the cases.