Increasing the use and accessibility of LCA in Unilever Unilever g - PDF document

Giles Rigarlsford Increasing the use and accessibility of LCA in Unilever

Unilever g Fast moving consumer branded goods business n Foods & Home and Personal Care g Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) n advice and approval on COE g LCA began in Unilever in the late 1980s e.g. Surfactant studies for Laundry n most major product LCAs carried out n key to supporting innovation

LCA in Unilever g Product/Process Comparisons n assess options and improvements n explore design alternatives g Category Assessments n improve understanding n identify “hot-spots” g Communicating Environmental Performance n support product launches n support external activities n inform the public

Brochures http://www.unilever.com

Detailed LCA Product Innovation Approach to A or B? Screening LCA ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Ideas ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Changing Agenda

“…increasing awareness within business itself that many of the big social and environmental challenges of our age, once seen as obstacles to progress, have become opportunities for innovation and business development. I believe that we have come to a point now where this agenda of sustainability and corporate responsibility is not only central to business strategy but will increasingly become a critical driver of business growth. I would go further: I believe that how well and how quickly businesses respond to this agenda will determine which companies succeed and which will fail in the next few decades.” Patrick Cescau, Group Chief Executive, Unilever May 2007

Future Business Approach to Product Innovation A or B? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Ideas ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

LCA in SEAC g Many product life cycles well understood n generic well structured, robust and tested models for a number of Unilever’s product life cycles g Increasing requirement from business to understand the environmental implications of changes to product n make informed decisions n support product launch g Where frequent but relatively small changes in product formulations under consideration, comprehensive LCA studies not always appropriate n limited expert resource

Method Development: Interactive Reporting Interface I-Reports is an additional software interface developed from the g commercially available GaBi Software Modelling carried out in GaBi software g n LCA practitioners create models/ develop and refine models from previous product studies Models exported out of GaBi into the user friendly interface g n The interface allows the user to input variables to test alternative scenarios and generate environmental reports based on predefined parameters n The interface is independent of LCA software n The user is not constructing an LCA model but changing variables within an existing model n The impact categories are predefined by the LCA practitioner

Scenario Input

Report Output

Recent Examples in Business Packaging Environmental Laundry Environmental Evaluation Tool in Brazil Evaluation Tool in Sweden http://www.via.se

Conclusions/ Future g Raised awareness and ownership g Environmental considerations taken early g Simplified communication interface g Frees up expert resource g Intranet based validation