Abstract
In order to protect the environment in a credible manner, organizations need to rely on stable schemes. The most applied and widespread approaches for environmental assessments at the organization level have only recently considered the full value chain and mostly concentrate on a single aspect. Carbon footprinting, for example, has shown that the environmental impacts beyond the walls of the organization can play an important role in the overall impact of an organization. While life cycle assessment (LCA) was originally conceived to be applicable only for products, its benefits and potential might also be extended for organizational assessme nt. The discussions on the carbon footprint of organizations and the development of the Scope 3-standard of the GHG (greenhouse gas) Protocol promoted the future use of a corporate approach. Several initiatives are on the way for the LCA of organizations: UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative proposes organizational LCA (O-LCA), using as a backbone ISO/TS 14072; moreover, the European Commission launched a guide for the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF). The main new elements of the methodology are at the scope and inventory phase, when the unit of analysis and the system boundary are defined, as well as the approach for data collection. LCA of organizations may represent a key element in the internal decision-making system of an organization, as it can provide insight on the organization and value chain and identify hotspots where action is more needed. It may also provide information and support the organization for voluntary or mandatory reporting to third parties and in its communication plan. This chapter aims to discuss the need and features of the LCA of organizations, present the several initiatives that currently exist, provide an overview of the technical framework and proposals to streamline the application of the methodology, and finally to illustrate each one with two case studies.
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Notes
- 1.
Activities from sites that are owned or controlled by the reporting organization (UNEP 2015).
- 2.
Activities that are a consequence of the operations of the reporting organization, but occur at sites owned or controlled by another organization (upstream or downstream) (UNEP 2015).
- 3.
- 4.
In this section we use Accor’s terminology (see, for instance, Accor 2001b). It does not refer to the Organizational Environmental Footprint, OEF, presented in Sect. 1.4.3.
- 5.
Water consumption label was used by Accor and it is also used here, although it does not refer to the common definition of water consumption, including evaporative effect (see Berger and Finkbeiner 2010). The rationale behind this indicator refers to water use.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Abbreviations
- CDP:
-
Carbon disclosure project
- CSR:
-
Corporate Social Responsibility
- EMAS:
-
Eco-Management and Audit Scheme
- EMS:
-
Environmental management system
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gas
- GRI:
-
Global Reporting Initiative
- IPCC:
-
Intergovernmental panel on climate change
- ISO:
-
International Organization for Standardization
- NACE codes:
-
Nomenclature générale des activités economiques dans les communautés européennes
- OBIA:
-
Overall business impact assessment
- OEF:
-
Organisation Environmental Footprint
- OEFSRs:
-
Organisation Environmental Footprint Sector Rules
- O-LCA:
-
Organizational LCA (used by UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative)
- OLCA:
-
Organizational LCA (used by ISO)
- OEF:
-
Organisation Environmental Footprint
- PEF:
-
Product Environmental Footprint
- SETAC:
-
Society of environmental toxicology and chemistry
- SMEs:
-
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
- UNEP:
-
United Nations Environment Program
- USLP:
-
Unilever sustainable living plan
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Martínez-Blanco, J., Inaba, A., Finkbeiner, M. (2016). Life Cycle Assessment of Organizations. In: Finkbeiner, M. (eds) Special Types of Life Cycle Assessment. LCA Compendium – The Complete World of Life Cycle Assessment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7610-3_8
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