Assessing environmental performance by combining life cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis and environmental performance indicators

Abstract

We present a new analytical tool, called COMPLIMENT, which can be used to provide detailed information on the overall environmental impact of a business. COMPLIMENT integrates parts of tools such as life cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis and environmental performance indicators. It avoids disadvantages and combines complementary aspects of these three tools. The methodology is based on environmental performance indicators, expanding the scope of data collection towards a life cycle approach and including a weighting and aggregation step. A case study on the Thai pulp industry illustrates the usefulness of COMPLIMENT.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to the process industry: a review

“…One of the most widespread methods is multi-objective optimization that consists of simultaneously optimizing two or more conflicting objectives (Alexander et al 2000;Dietz et al 2006;Hermann et al 2007). The initial idea was that it was impossible to satisfy simultaneously economic, social and environmental objectives, but possible to define a tradeoff between these objectives, thanks to a multi-objective optimization (Alexander et al 2000).…”

“…They applied the methodology to an example of incinerator production and combined different existing methodologies like LCA, activity-based costing, environmental management accounting, economic model for control and evaluation of environmental impacts and risk matrix. Hermann et al (2007), quoted earlier for their work, applied the COMPLIMENT tool to the case study of eucalyptus pulp production using soda treatment and chlorine bleaching processes. The interesting point of this work was that it was run at two different levels: large system boundaries (cradleto-grave approach: from the eucalyptus plantation to the finished product) and at a process level (gate-to-gate approach:…”

Automated system for data acquisition and monitoring

“…AHP was successfully used in environmental impact assessment for determining of weights for impact categories [10]. AHP was used for verification of results gained by quantification of environmental aspects and impacts [11].…”

Benchmarking Systems and Methods for Environmental Performance Models

“…It helps the company's management to find out how to continu-ously and exactly monitor the development of the company's environmental impacts in the chosen sector (economic activities connected with NACE -Statistical classification of economic activities [6]) and to find relationships between the environment, the economy and society and to transform them into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) [5], [7], [8] for the measurement of environmental performance.…”