Comprehensive life cycle assessment by transferring of preventative costs in the supply chain of products. A first draft of the Oiconomy system

Abstract

a b s t r a c tA major part of global unsustainability is embedded in consumption and the processes involved in the lifecycle of products, but there is currently no comprehensive and objective method for product sustainability measurement, including both environmental and social issues. This requires a life cycle approach. Current life cycle assessment (LCA) systems, developed to compare environmental performance of products and production alternatives, have many shortcomings if used to comprehensively measure product sustainability. The most important shortcomings are : the lack of a measuring standard, the top-down approach, the weighting of different issues, the very laborious procedures of addressing specific supply chains, limitation to environmental aspects , the very complex nature of impact based data, and difficult database maintenance. This article presents a new type of "bottom-up" and "productspecific LCA" for the comprehensive measurement of the hidden environmental and social costs of products. Every supply chain actor collects the upstream supply chain hidden costs, calculates and adds its own contribution and transfers the result to the next link by means of a monetary unit, the "Eco Social Cost Unit" (ESCU). Every ESCU allocation is the product of a quantitative factor for an issue and a price factor. The uniform measurement of the quantitative factor, their transfer through the supply chain, and the creation of a self learning database of the price factors is achieved by means of a standard.The price factor represents the marginal preventative costs for the relative impact category of sustainability issues. For initial determination of the price factor this article extends the EcoCost/Value ratio system, developed by Vogtl€ ander et al., to social issues, discusses implications of the system, its principles, advantages, research challenges and limitations and proposes system boundaries for application of the system and future research contributions to the project.

Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project

“…(Jørgensen et al 2008; Macombe et al 2013; Benoît and Vickery-Niederman 2011; Chhipi-Shrestha et al 2015; Swarr 2009; Hsu et al 2013; Hauschild et al 2008; Benoît Norris 2012; Hutchins and Sutherland 2008; Jørgensen et al 2010b; Finkbeiner et al 2010). Not included in these reviews is preventative cost-based LCA (Vogtländer et al 2000), extended to S-LCA by Croes and Vermeulen (2015). …”

“…Subsequently, using the obtained conclusions and ideas, a proposal for the quantification of corruption for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system was developed, following the Oiconomy method (Croes and Vermeulen 2015), which is very similar to the method used in the regularly used EcoCost system (Vogtländer et al 2000) and consists of five steps:Definition of the impact category and characterization factor.Determination of the corruption target, or performance reference point.Literature study of available preventative measures.Determination of the costs of the available preventative measures.Assessment of which preventative measures are required to globally reach the target. The last and most expensive determined this way, presents the marginal preventative costs, which in the EcoCost and Oiconomy systems serve as cost distance to target, and represent our proposal for the quantification of corruption.…”

“…The Oiconomy system comprises both environmental, social, and economic sustainability aspects and intends to use a certification system for the transfer of foreground data through the supply chain of products. The system is fully explained in Croes and Vermeulen (2015) and will be described shortly in a subsection “Oiconomy system” in the results section of this paper, where it is presented as part of a study of S-LCA methodology. The objective of this paper is to investigate literature on the available options to (preferably interval-) quantify corruption in S-LCA, distinctive for specific products and use the options and ideas found to make a first proposal for quantification for preventative costs based S-LCA.…”

“…To date, such literature is hardly available, so more generally, S-LCA methods were assessed on described concepts and ideas, and assessed on five criteria. Following this, using the obtained conclusions and ideas, a proposal for the quantification of corruption for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system was developed, following the five-step Oiconomy method (Croes and Vermeulen in J Clean Prod 102:178–187, 2015). …”

From value-added tax to a damage and value-added tax partially based on life cycle assessment: principles and feasibility

“…The horizontal arrows represent money transfers for tax collection or refund by the State Pizzol et al 2015 for a recent review). In the Netherlands, Croes and Vermeulen (2015) are currently developing a valuation method inspired by Vogtländer and Bijma (2000) by which every supply chain actor collects the upstream hidden environmental and social costs of its products and adds to them its own contribution. In France, the Fondation 2019 is developing a research program on the possibility of correcting the final price of goods and services through significant variations in VAT based on a Blife cycle externalities assessment ( Fondation 2019( Fondation 2011Thi et al 2016).…”