PARENT SESSION

6E - Life cycle management
Poster Hall
8:30 AM - Monday, 28 April 2003
Chair: Saur, K.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Frankl, P.², ²

(MOP/219) Environmental fingerprint of consumer goods for use in life cycle management (LCM).

Van Hoof, Gert¹, Schowanek, Diederik¹, Boeije, Geert¹, Feijtel, Tom¹, ¹ Procter & Gamble Eurocor, Strombeek-Bever, Belgium, Belgium

ABSTRACT- Effective communication of complex environmental information to decision makers is very challenging. Within Procter & Gamble, a visual presentation is developed for communicating environmental information from comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) and product risk assessment towards management and external audiences. When this information is combined with market share data, an environmental fingerprint of a complete product category can be created. In the fast moving consumer goods industry these fingersprints are important (1) to track environmental performance changes over time, (2) to integrate product development with marketing strategies and (3) to develop longer term LCM strategies towards product design. A case study on laundry detergents is presented, where LCA of products from 3 different time periods (1988-1998-2001) is combined with actual market information to derive an environmental fingerprint for a ′market averaged′ P&G laundry detergent.

Key words: consumer goods, life cycle management, decision making