Company Ltd Example

1. Formulate the environmental policy
“Company Ltd aims to be recognized by its actions as an environmentally conscious company. This will be accomplished by:

• continuous improvement and a policy controlled environmental management system
• compliance with environmental legislation and other environmental requirements
• pollution prevention by reduction of waste, contamination of land and emissions to air and water”

2. Extract environmental condition indicator
The key words found in the policy of Company Ltd are:

• pollution
• waste
• land contamination
• air emissions
• water emissions

Company Ltd has chosen to use category indicators from existing impact assessment methods. The key words are translated to environmental condition indicators below:

• Pollution
  The pollution is divided into the impact categories Land pollution, Air pollution and Water pollution.
   
• Waste
  No suitable indicator was found in the existing impact assessment methods. Supposing that production of waste results in landfill, the land area occupied by solid waste (measured in m2) was chosen as indicator belonging to the impact category “Land pollution”.
   
• Land contamination
  Land pollution is chosen for impact category with the following category indicators:
  Crop (kg) from EPS 2000
  Wood (kg) from EPS 2000
  Solid waste (m2)
   
• Air emissions
  Air pollution is chosen for impact category with the following category indicator:
  GWP (g CO2/g substance) from EDIP
   
• Water emissions
  Water pollution is chosen for impact category with the following category indicator:
  Drinking water (kg) from EPS 2000

3. Classify environmental condition indicator to environmental aspect
Characterization parameters from the chosen impact assessment models are used for the classification of environmental condition indicators to environmental aspects. The result is a list of inputs and outputs to which the environmental aspects needed because of laws and regulations etc are added.
The ECI “Solid waste” is not part of any existing characterization method and is manually translated into the documented flow “Scrap” for one of the process at the company.

4. Carry out inventory of quantitative status of environmental aspects
The processes at Company Ltd are documented according to ISO/TS 14048.

5. Characterize environmental impacts from environmental aspects
For the “Solid waste” indicator, an improvised characterization was made manually, stating that 1 ton of solid waste will occupy 0.1 m2 of land. The other characterisation parameters can be viewed in the documentation of the EPS 2000 and EDIP methods.

6. Weigh environmental impacts with respect to priorities of policy and objectives
The Board of Company Ltd Sweden and environmental experts has in a panel procedure developed company specific priorities of which environmental impacts they consider most detrimental:
 

Category indicator	Priority	Unit
Solid waste	10	Points/m2
Crop	50	Points/kg crop
Wood	10	Points/kg wood
GWP	100	Points/kg CO2
Drinking water	50	Points/kg water