W10 AM Life Cycle Approaches to Water Resources
Wednesday, 16 November 2005: 8:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 341-342

(BRA-1117-830796) Beyond the Fence Line - How to combine EMS and the life cycle perspective for an efficient data management.

Braune, A¹, Pflieger, J¹, Kreissig, J², Binder, M², Fischer, M¹, Eyerer, P¹, ¹ University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany² PE Europe GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany

ABSTRACT- In recent years, an accelerated demand for information on environmental effects 'beyond the fence line' of organizations can be observed. There is a widespread agreement that emissions directly released at facilities and resources used have to be monitored and inventoried. This is done by means of diversely shaped Environmental Management Systems (EMS). However, taking on the responsibility for further product related environmental issues requires to enhance the view to the life cycle perspective. Some of the guidelines for EMS already ask for the integration and reporting of indirect environmental aspects. Also, reporting schemes in line with the Kyoto protocol strive for to cover indirect emissions by expanding the inventories' boundaries. For example the three level approach under different schemes divides the inventories into different scopes according to the boundaries: Scope I focuses on emissions from core operations of the organization (direct emissions). Scopes II and III include imported and exported upstream and downstream emissions like energy-related emissions and emissions from business travel, product transport and waste disposal. Nowadays, data for indirect environmental aspects of all widely used materials and energy sources are available. Derived from comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) the indirect impacts are given in form of so-called environmental profiles of the respective products. Almost all organizations are facing the challenge how to manage and collect required data and use them in an efficient and transparent way to fulfil the expectations of all interested stakeholders. This presentation will describe how to efficiently link and manage environmental data and will present a practice-oriented strategy how to combine EMS and LCA in a time and resource efficient way by using existing tools. A data management system where both perspectives are included will be presented and the manageability will be specified.

Key words: data management, LCA tools, EMS, indirect emissions