Sustainable Development Enterprise

Abstract

From the analysis in the previous chapters, it can be observed that a circular economy has a complex structure and its economic component has an enterprise as the minimum independent accounting and basic work unit.

11.1 Presentation of Core Issues

From the analysis in the previous chapters, it can be observed that a circular economy has a complex structure and its economic component has an enterprise as the minimum independent accounting and basic work unit. An enterprise is critical in achieving the ambitious goal of a circular economy. To clarify the basic requirements of a circular economy, an enterprise is very important to promote a circular economy; additionally, the enterprise must possess specific conditions and features to satisfy the overall objectives of the circular economy. For an enterprise to function in the social economy, the enterprise provides a product with a specific service function for the society or directly provides a specific service; thus, what is the performance of these products or services, and how is it evaluated? These are related to the survival of the enterprise; therefore, the key topics in this chapter are defining the requirements of a circular economy for an enterprise and determining how the product or service provided by an enterprise can be evaluated.

Beginning with the basic requirements of a circular economy for an enterprise, the concept of a sustainable development enterprise will be introduced and combined with the current environmental bottleneck factors confronted by enterprise development at this stage, the relationship between an environmentally friendly enterprise and a sustainable development enterprise will be explained. Then, focusing on the enterprise’s core function of providing services to society combined with the product life cycle, an international standard is evaluated, and the basic method of enterprise-environment performance is discussed and evaluated.

11.2 What Is a Sustainable Development Enterprise?

11.2.1 What Are the Requirements of a Circular Economy for an Enterprise?

In the model framework of a circular economy shown in Fig. 6.1, the three activities of material production, product processing, and manufacturing, and waste recovery and regeneration consist of many related enterprises, and product use is not only the job objective of production and manufacturing but is also the premise of waste recovery and regeneration. There also exists an intrinsic connection to the enterprise’s behavior; therefore, an enterprise is important in the operation of a circular economy.

For an enterprise’s function in a material circular flow, as the necessary link in the material’s artificial flow process, no matter if there is a “serial type,” “parallel type,” or other networking relationships among the enterprise and other enterprises, the material use efficiency in the entire artificial flow process will be influenced by the material utilization efficiency of that enterprise. The enterprise must provide its material utilization efficiency and embody the “3R” principle (i.e., reduction, reuse, and recycle) from different perspectives. This is primarily reflected in the highly efficient utilization of resources emphasized in and among each production department. The production department should establish substantial connections with the service and social consumption departments to maintain and extend product service life and to promote the waste recovery and recycling of the product after use. For the external enterprise, cost saving and emission reduction should be achieved to allow the entire industry to reduce its interference or influence on the external environment. To describe the environmental impact behavior of the enterprise more clearly, the enterprise causing less interference or influence on the human environment is called an environmentally friendly enterprise.

11.2.2 Which Essential Characteristics Should an Enterprise Possess?

The enterprise offers specific services for society and obtains certain economic benefits, which is the basic condition for the survival and development of an enterprise. During a resource environmental crisis, the enterprise possessing good environmental performance will become the enterprise that survives.

• (I) Economic sustainability

Economic sustainability of an enterprise is embodied in their eco-environmental impact, which effects their economic development; furthermore, the sound development of an ecological environment is regarded as the basic condition of an enterprise’s economic development. In the enterprise’s economic development, the environmental friendliness of the product or service is regarded as the enterprise’s competitiveness to promote resource use efficiency and service quality by means of technical innovation (including product variety, material selection, manufacturing technique, and service format) and the optimization of the inner link of material and energy among other enterprises, resulting in improved economic benefits. For example, an enterprise attracts customers by producing modular products convenient for the renewal of the product function or the replacement of parts damaged during use, or the enterprise gains customers via the close-to-life products made of environmentally friendly materials, gaining corresponding economic benefits.

To achieve economic sustainability, an enterprise should focus on the trend of national or regional economic development, understand their relevant industry, professional policy, and regulation, incorporate itself into a regional eco-industry system in a timely manner, and cooperate with other local enterprises to form an industrial cluster, thus gaining the corresponding regional advantages.

• (II) Social sustainability

Satisfaction of social demands is one of the important objectives of an enterprise. Social sustainability of an enterprise means the enterprise should constantly meet the ever-growing and ever-changing social services requirements (e.g., the constant change in the performance requirements, appearance, carrying, and information storage of mobile communication devices) demanded by human beings. In this example, the mobile phone has been upgraded to incorporate a microcomputer device integrated with communication, video frequency, and other functions from the single “talking” device of its early stages. Second, by means of the produced product or provided service, the enterprise guides, meets, and constantly improves social consumption. For example, to ease traffic congestion and improve traffic conditions in Beijing, in 2013, the Beijing Traffic Committee installed 520 public bicycle rental locations to place 14,000 bicycles in seven districts and counties of Beijing, which provides bicycle access to four districts and counties, namely Dongcheng District, Chaoyang District, Fengtai District, and Shijingshan District and guides citizen to choose a green travel consumption pattern. In addition, the enterprise provides corresponding employment opportunities for society to promote the development of the labor force. Since the circular economy has developed, our country has developed a vast materials recovery and regeneration system and has provided a significant number of jobs for society. According to statistics, the number of people engaged in neighborhood services, repair, and other service industries had reached 754,000 in 2014.

• (III) Environmental sustainability

Resource and environment are the basic conditions for enterprise development. The behavior of a sustainable development enterprise should be beneficial to the sustainable development of the environment. Environmental sustainability of an enterprise should be embodied in its operation to be beneficial for natural resource conservation and environmental waste emission reduction and should fully reflect a resource and environment protection strategy. For example, clean energy should be primarily selected to power equipment by an energy-using equipment manufacturing enterprise. There are very good cases, such as the solar water heater and solar car being developed in rapid succession in recent years. The service-type enterprise providing large-scale public service must greatly improve their service structure and operations pattern. For example, in recent years, Beijing has newly built subway routes to increase public transportation and to facilitate the substitution of a public transit system for private automobiles, concurrently, a number of bicycles are available to solve traffic congestion; thus, effectively improving environmental quality.

11.2.3 What Is a Sustainable Development Enterprise?

• (I) Concept of a sustainable development enterprise

Due to the irreversibility of resources and environment conditions, reaching sustainable development is a lengthy process, and the enterprise will be requested to possess good environmental performance well into the future. Being “environment-friendly” is likely to become necessary for a successful enterprise. Therefore, the enterprise’s development must not only gain social and economic benefits but also perform the mission of environmental construction. An enterprise that is beneficial for the sustainable development of the environment, economy, and society simultaneously is called a sustainable development enterprise. It is an enterprise that is guided by the “3R” principle of a circular economy to perform resource protection and environmental improvement-oriented process management of its product or service and to fundamentally achieve the “triple-win” objectives of economic, social, and environmental benefits.

It is not difficult to observe that an environmentally friendly enterprise is the initial and necessary stage of a sustainable development enterprise. It is the historic choice to break through the development bottleneck of the enterprise under the limitations of a resource and environmental crisis and is also an important measure to improve the resources and environmental conditions in the construction of a sustainable development enterprise. With the improvement of resources and the environment, an environmentally friendly enterprise at this stage will gradually transition to a substantive sustainable development enterprise.

• (II) Connotation of a sustainable development enterprise

A sustainable development enterprise is embodied in the relationships within the enterprise itself and the relationship between the enterprise and the external environment. For the enterprise itself, the sustainable development enterprise is embodied in the circular flow relationship of the materials in each of its processes and among the processes; it is the basic representation of the circular economy at a microscopic level. It includes the following characteristics: The material lost in production is regarded as raw materials after being recycled for return to the original production process, the wastes produced in the production process are properly treated as raw materials or used to replace a portion of the raw materials to return to the material production flow, and the waste products recycled from society are reused. Enterprise behavior will be presented as providing an eco-friendly product or service with specific serviceability, including the overall improvement of the entire process from material selection, product manufacturing, and transportation of the product to the final user, delivery, product scrap recycling, and disposal. Within the relationship between an enterprise and the external environment, a sustainable development enterprise will focus on the integration of resources and environmental conditions within the region and actively form a communal relationship among resources (e.g., material, energy, and information) with other enterprises in the region that not only utilizes and saves other enterprises’ waste resources but also provides its own unrecyclable wastes to other enterprises or departments for reuse or as garbage for disposal, to form a symbiotic eco-industry park or industrial cluster. Thus, by means of the eco-friendly construction of the enterprise itself, the coexistence of enterprise development and human sustainable development can be achieved.

• (III) Relationship between an environmentally friendly enterprise and a sustainable development enterprise

An environmentally friendly enterprise grows specific to environmental improvement, and it is the enterprise whose environmental performance of its product or service is improved energetically on the basis of existing enterprises. Eco-friendly is regarded as the necessary attribute of enterprise development for its management and operation. It is not difficult to observe that an environmentally friendly enterprise is focused on environmental improvement, and it is the initial and necessary stage of a sustainable development enterprise. It is the historic choice to break through the development bottleneck of the enterprise under the limitations of the resource and environmental crisis and is also an important measure to improve the resources and environmental conditions in the construction of a sustainable development enterprise. With the improvement of resources and the environment, an environmentally friendly enterprise will gradually transition into a substantive sustainable development enterprise.

11.3 Method to Evaluate the Environmental Performance of an Enterprise

As the resource transformation entity, an enterprise is related to many raw materials, energy and power, manufacturing techniques, technologies, equipment, and infrastructure during the process of transforming raw materials into products. There is the exchange of material and energy between the enterprise and the external environment during enterprise operations, resulting in environmental impact. Effective and scientific methods are used to objectively understand these environmental impacts, so that measures can be taken to improve the enterprise’s environmental performance.

Since 1997, evaluation methods for a product life cycle have been successively issued by the ISO to provide important scientific methods for the environmental performance of product assessment, specific services, and processes, and it becomes an important basis for determining the environmental performance of an enterprise as well.

According to the existing LCA standard, a product is used as an example in this section to specify the basic method for evaluating a product’s environmental performance.

11.3.1 Overview

• (I) Basic concept

A product is an important form for the enterprise to provide services for human beings. During the product life cycle, the necessary connection is established between the social economy and the external environment regarding material flow, energy flow, and other aspects. Therefore, we can determine the environmental impact level by analyzing the environmental impact caused during the product life cycle.

The life cycle described here refers to the entire process from obtaining raw material to product production, use, and waste disposal; it is the entire process of a product from “cradle-to-grave,” and each stage is called a life cycle stage. For example, the life cycle of a car includes obtaining raw material (i.e., iron ore mining), forming steel products, glass, rubber, and other multiple industrial materials for preparing the various components of a car, processing and assembling components into the car, using the car after delivery, scrapping the car after several years of use, recovery, dismantling, and regeneration disposal.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique to evaluate environmental performance and potential environmental impact of products, and this technique is used to evaluate the potential environmental impact related to the input and output of a product system. The scope of evaluation involves the entire life cycle of a product. Through product LCA, the research result will be used to identify the improvement opportunities for product’s environmental performance; provide the decision basis for the enterprise, government, and non-governmental organization for strategic planning and public policy making; choose the indicators to evaluate product environmental performance; prepare product environmental labeling; and promote marketing.

• (II) Issued international standard

In 1993, the technical committee for environmental management was established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to prepare the LCA international standard. In 1997, the principle and framework of the LCA standard were issued, and then ISO 14040-14049 (nearly ten international standards) were successively released, as follows:

ISO 14040: 1997 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Principles and framework are replaced by ISO 14040: 2006 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Principles and Framework.

ISO 14041: 1998 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Goal and Scope Definition and Inventory Analysis.

ISO 14042: 2000 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Life Cycle Impact Assessment.

ISO 14043: 2000 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Life Cycle Impact Interpretation.

ISO 14044: 2006 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Requirements and guidelines.

ISO/TR 14047: 2012 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Illustrative examples on how to apply ISO 14044 to impact assessment situations. The original ISO/TR 14047: 2003 Environmental management—Life cycle impact assessment—Examples of application of ISO 14042 is replaced.

ISO 14048: 2002 Environmental management—Life cycle impact assessment—Data documentation format.

ISO/TR 14049: 2012 Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Illustrative examples on how to apply ISO 14044 to goal and scope definition and inventory analysis. Replaces the original standard ISO/TR 14049: 2000 Examples of application of ISO 14041 for goal and scope definition and inventory analysis.

• (III) LCA framework

Product LCA includes the following four basic elements: the definition of research purpose and scope, inventory analysis, environmental impact assessment, and explanation of research results, as shown in Fig. 11.1.

Fig. 11.1

Source ISO 14040

Composition of product LCA.

11.3.2 Definition of Purpose and Scope

• (I) Definition of research purpose

To implement product LCA, first, clarify the purpose of the research. Clearly specify the application intention of the LCA study, the cause of the study and its application object. For example, inform consumers of the environmental performance of a product or compare two products with same service function to make the choice beneficial for environmental protection. The service object of the research result can be an enterprise manager, functional government department, product consumer, or scientific research institution.

• (II) Definition of research scope

To ensure consistency among the study range, depth, level of detail, and research purpose, the scope of the LCA study must be defined, including the following:

• 1. Product function, functional unit, and reference flow

The function of the product system refers to the service performance of product, e.g., tissue is used to dry an arm and a light bulb is used for lighting. When a product has multiple service functions or can provide multiple services, a specific function for specific LCA research must be chosen based on the purpose of the LCA study.

A function unit (FU) refers to the unit selected to quantitatively describe the service performance provided by the product system. For example, a 10,000 m² wall is painted and maintained for five years, which can be used as the function unit provided by the painting product. For another example, in a transportation system, “10,000 people are transported from A to B every day for ten years of continuous use,” which can be used as the function unit of the service system. Generally, the function unit is the composite unit composed of many physical units; this is entirely different from the traditional physical unit.

Reference flow is the parameter to measure the output quantity of each process or production phase in the product system to achieve the specific amount of service function represented by the function unit. For example, when a “20 m² wall is painted and maintained for ten years” is defined as the service function unit of a specific painting product, if the painting performance is that 1 L of paint is sufficient to cover 8.7 m² of wall for five years, the “20 m² wall is painted and maintained for ten years” can be achieved, and the quantity of paint required can be calculated as follows:

$$ \frac{20 \times 10}{8.7 \times 5} = 4.6\;{\text{L}} $$

Put differently, to complete the specific quantity of service (i.e., “20 m² wall is painted and maintained for ten years”), 4.6 L of paint is required, which is the reference flow corresponding to the paint product system.

• 2. Product system and system boundary

The product system is the set of processes for the entire product life cycle. The system boundary is the interface between the product system and its external environment. Generally, the composition of a product system depends on the research purpose of the LCA. When the same product has different research purposes, its defined product system is also different. For example, when a specific structural steel product is used to compare the energy conservation level between iron ore steelmaking and steel scrap resource steelmaking, LCA research would be related to two types of product systems: The semi-life cycle primary steel product system composed of iron ore mining, blast furnace ironmaking, converter steelmaking, steel rolling, and other major process, and the semi-life cycle steel scrap regeneration product system composed of scrap steel recycling, electric arc furnace steelmaking, steel rolling, and other processes.

• 3. Categories of environmental impact

When LCA research is implemented, the environmental impact categories generated in the product must be chosen. In ISO 14040 and ISO 14043, the environmental impact is divided into three impact types: ecosystem, human health, and natural resources. In application, the environmental impact is subdivided into global climate change, ozone depletion, acid deposition, biodiversity reduction, and other subclasses. When a specific LCA is implemented, generally, one or more environmental impact categories are chosen for study. For example, to determine which of the original refrigerants [i.e., HFC-134a and R12 (CFC-12)] is more environmentally friendly, consider that the refrigerant primarily influences the composition of the atmospheric material in the ozone sphere; therefore, ozone depletion is selected as the category of environmental impact for the refrigerant LCA study.

• 4. Data quality requirement

In the LCA research scope, the data quality used in the LCA must be defined according to the purpose of the LCA study. This includes data-related time spans, regional breadth, technical coverage, data accuracy, integrity and representativeness, data source, and typicality. For example, for a specific LCA research of an upgraded manufacturing technique, the data used in the study are required to be from the actual production of the enterprise.

• (III) Several examples

• 1. Example 1: Identification of product function and the function unit

To understand the special concept of the function unit more clearly, Table 11.1 shows examples of several products and compares the differences in the product performance and the function unit.

Table 11.1 Example for identifying product function and function unit

• 2. Example 2: Example of a product system

As previously mentioned, a product system is the set of processes for the entire product life cycle. It includes all activities from raw material mining to final waste disposal, as shown in Fig. 11.2.

Fig. 11.2

Source ISO 14040

Sketch map of product system.

11.3.3 Inventory Analysis

• (I) Inventory analysis steps

Inventory analysis is the process of preparing the input and output lists specific to each process in the product system and calculating the data corresponding to its functional unit. The basic steps are shown in Fig. 11.3.

Fig. 11.3

Source ISO 14041

Basic steps of inventory analysis.

It can be observed from Fig. 11.3 that the inventory analysis in life cycle assessment is primarily related to data collection and calculation.

• (II) Data collection

To obtain all the data demanded for a product LCA, generally, perform the following steps.

First, decompose each step in each life cycle phase in the product system listed in the research scope to form a technique flowchart at each relevant enterprise level. Specifically, draw the process flow diagram for the different manufacturing shops and production processes in each enterprise with sufficient detail to independently collect actual operational data, and then, draw the function of each process in the product life cycle and the relations among them. Figure 11.4 is the industrial flow diagram of a specific steel plant and the process flow diagram of the rolling production line.

Fig. 11.4

Source Wang [1]

Technological process of a certain steel manufacture process.

Second, describe the function of each process (including the process name) in the product life cycle and list the type of data collected and their units of measurement, as shown in Table 11.2, to perform data collection specific to every process.

Table 11.2 Example of a process data collection table

The process is the basic unit to collect data. When data are collected specific to each process, we can list the types of required data, as shown in Fig. 11.5. Then, collect each piece of related data. If data are not collected in the production field, a data collection guideline should be prepared to describe the data collection and counting method, and the handling method of the possible problem on site (e.g., data shortage or significant deviation), to guide field staff to reference and collect the required data.

Fig. 11.5

Basic unit of inventory analysis

• (III) Data calculation

The purpose of data calculation is to obtain the data corresponding to the function unit defined within the range of the study. The collected data are used to calculate the data corresponding to the reference flow in each process, and then, the data are converted to correspond to the function unit of the product system.

Generally, data calculation should consider the physical relation among data (e.g., material transformation relationship, transformation, and distribution relationship). For similar material or sources of energy, use the same unit of measurement. The source of energy is calculated based on standard coal. For unavailable data, provide the values via counting, estimation or another method, and indicate the method used.

In the example in Table 11.1, when a beverage bottle is in volume production, according to the field data from its forming process, when 10,000 0.5 L beverage bottles are formed, 5 MJ of heat would be consumed; therefore, when 100,000 pcs. (relative to the reference flow) of beverage bottles are formed, 50 MJ of heat would be consumed. The input/output data of each process corresponding to 100,000 beverage bottles is calculated, and finally, the data of the entire life cycle corresponding to 100,000 beverage bottles are summed. As the 100,000 of 0.5 L beverage bottles correspond to the function unit of the LCA, the data are the data of the beverage bottle life cycle corresponding to the function unit, namely the quantity of heat consumed to contain 50,000 L of beverage. The result of the data summarization can be converted into an absolute value or a relative value; however, within the latter it is easier to observe the distribution difference of the environmental load in each element, as shown in Table 11.3.

Table 11.3 Example of an LCA data settlement result for the energy consumption of a glass bottle life cycle

An example of the energy consumption of a glass bottle life cycle is provided here, while the actual inventory results for an LCA will be related to different types of data (i.e., material, energy, and noise) and should be collected into the table as the result of an inventory analysis.

11.3.4 Environmental Impact Assessment

A product life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is applied to evaluate the environmental impact level of the product (or service) system based on the result of the inventory analysis of the product life cycle. The environmental impact assessment is related to the type and indicator selection of environmental impact, classification of inventory analysis results and characterization.

• (I) Selection of environmental impact indicator and characteristic model

Based on the types of environmental impact selected in the definition process of the previous study range, and based on the two relation models (also called the characteristic model) between each material causing environmental impact and the formed environmental impact effect established by the international research institution, determine the indicator representing the level of environmental impact, namely the environmental impact category indicator. For example, due to climatic variation, the characterization model is selected from the relation models between greenhouse gas emission and climatic change established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For such environmental impact of climatic change, infrared intensity is used as the indicator to represent the climatic change by the IPCC, and global warming potential (GWP) is used to reflect the climatic changeability of the different greenhouse gases. Table 11.4 shows the relationship among inventory analysis results, environmental impact indicators, and characteristic models. Other types of environmental impacts are also researched by the special international organization to build the corresponding models and characteristic indexes.

Table 11.4 Example of terms in the determination process of environmental impact categories and characteristic index

• (II) Classification of inventory analysis results

Based on the environmental impact categories selected in the definition of the range of the study, the results of the life cycle inventory analysis are classified into environmental impact categories. For example, in a specific LCA, climatic change, and acid rain are selected as the environmental impact categories, and the amounts of CO₂, CH₄, SO₂, NO₂, and other pollutants are obtained in the analysis. In this case, the discharge of CO₂ and CH₄ should be classified as climatic change, while the discharge of SO₂ and NO₂ should be classified as acid rain.

• (III) Inventory result characterization

One type of environmental impact category may be caused by many environmental pollutants, e.g., global warming might be caused by CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and other greenhouse gases. To uniformly represent the environmental impact ability of different pollutants more effectively, a typical substance is selected to convert the environmental impact energy of other pollutants by building the proportional relation of the quantity between other pollutants and the material causing the same environmental impact as the typical substance. The proportional relation of the quantity between a specific material and a typical substance under same environmental impact is called the characterization coefficient of the material. The characterization system is usually determined by a special research institution during the building of a characteristic model, as described in Sect. 4 of Chap. 4. For example, in the climatic change problem, the IPCC defines the climatic changeability of CO₂ within 100 years to be 1, and other substances are converted into the equivalent amount of CO₂ based on their climatic change abilities. This converted coefficient is called a characterization coefficient. For example, the CH₄ GWP is 25 and the CO GWP is 298. The different inventory analysis results are converted into the corresponding values of environmental impact via various environmental impact characteristic coefficients, which is called environmental impact characterization. The process can be divided into two steps. First, the characterization coefficient is selected and used to convert the assigned LCI results into the unified unit (i.e., the amount of all greenhouse gas emissions is expressed as a “CO₂ equivalent”), and the calculation results with the unified unit are collected. Second, the calculation results of various environmental impacts are summed to obtain the quantitative result of the life cycle environmental impact.

• (IV) Example

The light bulb in Table 11.1 continues to be used as an example.

If the discharges of greenhouse gases CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O are 50, 30, and 10 kg, respectively, in the life cycle of 10,000 bulbs with 100 lx illuminance and 1000 h of service life, what is the impact level of climatic change demanded to achieve 300 lx 50,000 h of lighting?

Solution:

Different greenhouse gases have different climatic change environmental impact characterization coefficients, namely, their GWP. Considering that the GWP values of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O are 1, 25, and 298 kg CO₂ equivalent/kg, respectively, the GWP per 10,000 pcs. of 100 lx, 1000 h bulbs is as follows:

$$ 50 \times 1 + 30 \times 25 + 10 \times 298 = 3780\,\left( {{\text{kg}}\,{\text{CO}}_{2} \,{\text{equivalent}}/10,000\,{\text{bulbs}}} \right) $$

Based on the estimated results in Table 11.1, the reference flow corresponding to the process of achieving 300 lx, 50,000 h lighting is 150 bulbs, and the environmental impact value corresponding to the reference flow is as follows:

$$ 3780/10,000 \times 150 = 56.7\,{\text{kg}}\,{\text{CO}}_{2} \,{\text{equivalent}} $$

The environmental impact value corresponding to the reference flow is the environmental impact generated by achieving the designated function unit, and it can be expressed as the quantity of the function unit (FU), as follows:

$$ 56.7\,{\text{kg}}\,{\text{CO}}_{2} \,{\text{equivalent}}/{\text{FU}} $$

In addition, there are some optional elements, as specified in the following specialized courses or referenced professional books.

11.3.5 Discussion and Explanation

The explanation and discussion stage of the product life cycle is phase IV of the LCA, and it is used to explain and discuss the results of the LCA. In this phase, the researcher should identify the various influential factors that might affect the LCA research results and analyze the possible influence of these factors on the LCA research results to form conclusions and the report of the LCA research.

• (I) Example of identifying important matters

During the process of identifying LCA influential factors, focus on whether the research methods satisfy the requirement of the research purpose. These research methods include the selected product system (e.g., whether the established product system provides the expected service performance appropriately), the composition of each life cycle stage (e.g., the composition of each process), the type of inventory data (e.g., energy, environmental emission, if a specific type of data is lost, e.g., noise, is it possible to obtain different LCA research conclusions) and the environmental impact category (e.g., utilization of mineral resources, climatic change). These factors are called the important matters of environmental impact.

• (II) Data evaluation and inspection

LCA research results and conclusions are directly influenced by the data quality used. To ensure objective and valid research results, the data used in the study must be inspected and evaluated, including the following aspects:

• 1. Completeness check

A completeness check is used to confirm the availability and completeness of the information or data required in the LCA study, as shown in Table 11.5. Data found to be missing during the inspection can be remedied via actual measurement or estimation, and unnecessary data can be ignored, but its reasons for omission should be recorded.

Table 11.5 Example of a data completeness check

• 2. Sensitivity check

The sensitivity check is used to evaluate the reliability of the LCA research results and analyzes whether the LCA research results are influenced by data quality, calculation methods, a characteristic model of environmental impact or other various reasons, and the impact of their influence. Table 11.6 shows an example of the sensitivity check of the characterization coefficient.

Table 11.6 Example of the sensitivity check of the characterization coefficient

Table 11.6 shows that the value of the characterization coefficient has 28.6% sensitivity to the research results; thus, it is the LCA sensitive parameter.

• 3. Consistency check

Verify whether the assumptions, method and data used in the LCA research are consistent with the content defined by the research purpose and scope, as shown in Table 11.7.

Table 11.7 Example of a consistency check of the data

11.3.6 Writing the Research Report

Writing an LCA research report produces the overall summary of the LCA research process and results. An LCA research report should show just, complete and accurate research results to users, including the following contents:

• (1) Research purpose: cause, application purpose, and service object;

• (2) Research scope: range of product system, product function, function unit, system boundary, data category, data quality requirement,, and environmental impact category;

• (3) Inventory analysis: data collection method, process description, literature resources, data calculation method, and data efficiency analysis;

• (4) Impact assessment: environmental impact category, category indicator, characteristic model, and LCI results in classification and calculation;

• (5) Explanation and discussion: important matter analysis of results, research quality assessment, conclusions, and suggestions.

Each element influencing the research results should be fairly, completely, and accurately reported to the users, so that readers can understand the complexity of the research and the possible problems.

Evaluating the environmental impact level of an enterprise’s products is an important method to understand the environmental performance of their behavior. The implementation of an eco-friendly enterprise is necessary for the enterprise to move toward becoming a sustainable development enterprise and is also a necessary stage to realizing of global sustainable development, therefore the enterprises should been encouraged to perform environmental evaluations.

Classroom Discussions and Assignments

11.1.1 Topic Discussion

The product LCA method cannot only evaluate the environmental performance specific to a certain product or service but can also evaluate a specific production process or manufacturing technique. Please choose a familiar product or service and provide an outline for an environmental impact assessment.

11.1.2 Homework and Presentation in Class

By means of previous class discussions, homework, and presentations in class, students have learned the skills of topic selection, the basic thinking and methods of research of a specific topic, and can summarize it into a PowerPoint team report on the subject. However, in many cases, it is difficult for interested readers to personally attend the PowerPoint presentation; thus, the research must be presented as published papers. Paper writing is another important method to present the research engineering and results to readers. For this class, students are requested to present their scientific research in the form of a paper. The task of this lesson is to read an LCA research paper on the product or service selected in the class discussion and presented to the class as a PowerPoint presentation by the group, and summarizes it into a 1500- to 2000-word essay. To present the research status of a paper, include the topic selection process and the understanding and viewpoints of the paper. The grading scale is shown in Table 11.8.

Table 11.8 Grading of the group report in class