Environmental News, 72 – The Working Environment in LCA - A New Approach – 4 Historical background and the future for working environmental LCA

The Working Environment in LCA

4 Historical background and the future for working environmental LCA

4.1 Early Danish screening methods
4.2 EDIP
4.3 The first phase of the subproject
4.4 The second phase of the subproject
4.5 Future developments in WE-LCA
      4.5.1 The short perspective
      4.5.2 The longer perspective
      4.5.3 The long perspective

This chapter gives a short description of the historical development of working environmental LCA. The description is chronological, the main focus being on the methods with a possibility of aggregating the impacts over the whole life cycle in line with the recommendations in the ISO 14040-series. A more detailed description of the methods can be found in the technical report from subproject 3.

4.1 Early Danish screening methods

The wish to integrate the working environment in LCA has primarily been voiced by the Scandinavian countries. Accordingly, the largest part of method development in the area has taken place in the same region.

In Denmark, the first method for integration of the working environment was developed in the project ”Environmental assessment of PVC and selected alternative materials” (Christiansen et al, 1990). The suggested method is an expert-based screening of the chemical impacts, but without precisely defined criteria for the scoring of parameters. Such criteria were suggested in the pilot project to the Danish Material Development Programme (MUP) (Schmidt et al, 1991), and further refined in a Nordic report on Product Life Cycle Assessment (Schmidt et al, 1992) and in the main reports from the Material Development Programme (Schmidt et al, 1994).

The suggested criteria are all based on Danish or Nordic guidelines for classification and labelling of chemicals. This ensures that there is a good relation between current regulations and the decision support that emerges with an LCA of this type. It is however only possible to aggregate the information over the life cycle by using scoring systems with an unknown precision and prediction power.

4.2 EDIP

The first effort in the EDIP-project was a pilot project, the aim of which was to elucidate the possibility of developing a method for assessment of environmental, working environmental and resource aspects of the choice of materials (Jensen, Broberg and Winge, 1992). The main content of this pilot project is a screening method that to a large extent also builds on guidelines for classification and labelling of chemicals.

In the further development of the method in the main EDIP-project (EDIP97), it was a main concern that the results of the method could be aggregated over the life cycle of a product. The results of this development process are documented in the original reports from EDIP. The suggestion in the reports is that a combination of a sector assessment method and a process assessment method is used. The idea behind using a combined method is that this procedure is more operational because of a reduced need for data collection.

Neither in EDIP97 nor in the development of the PC-tool to be used with the method is performed a data collection that makes it possible to integrate the working environment with the other impact categories at the same level. Information on a few processes have been collected, e.g. production of steel and electricity, but the limited amount of data is not sufficient for a full integration, unless they are supplemented with large amounts of data collected specifically for the purpose.

In the initial proposal for the project ”LCA- method development, method improvement and consensus creation”, a need for adjustment and/or improvement of the method for better integration was identified. The present guidelines are one of the visible results of subproject 3, ”Integration of working environment in LCA”. In the following sections the development process in the project is described in some detail.

4.3 The first phase of the subproject

In the first phase of the subproject the existing tools for working environmental LCA were assessed. A very general conclusion from this work was that a process assessment method can give more precise results than a sector assessment. This precision is however achieved at the expense of the number of included effect categories and a significant increased data collection. It was not possible to give an assessment of the interaction of the method types because of the modest database and the lack of experience in form of cases.

A Swedish process assessment method from IVF (Bengtsson, 1995, 1996, 1997) was judged to give a more detailed result in form of many effect categories, but the data collection procedure is similar to EDIPs with respect to the necessary time. Furthermore, integration of the results achieved with the IVF-method with other impact categories requires that the principles for impact assessment are totally different from those used in EDIP. Use of elements from the IVF-method in EDIP is therefore associated with a large amount of work.

A Swedish sector assessment from IVL (Antonsson, 1996) was assessed to be very similar to the sector assessment in EDIP with respect to the level of detail and the demand of resources. The statistical basis is somewhat different in the two methods, but it is obvious that there are possibilities for co-ordination of the two methods when more experience has been gained.

As the examination of the existing methods could not point to obvious possibilities for improvement of the EDIP97-method it was decided to continue with the original project plan, i.e. testing of the method on a case. The expected result of this work was an extended and improved database of working environmental impacts in unit processes.

4.4 The second phase of the subproject

The first task in the second phase was to extend the database used in the sector assessment by following he guidelines in EDIP97, the first sector in the test being the plastic processing sector. The procedure for this is not described in detail, but the basic idea is that it shall be possible to calculate the impacts per functional unit, e.g. “the number of impacts per ton plastic tube.

The data for the sector assessment can be expressed in a simple formula:

As an example, the impacts from producing one kWh in Denmark can be calculated by dividing the total number of impacts in the electricity-producing sector with the total amount of electricity being produced.

Supply statistics in combination with information on work-related accidents and damages was seen to be a main element in the development of the few sector-related data in the original database. It was also stated in the reports that the sector assessment methodology was best suited for large and homogenous productions.

The database for reported accidents and injuries in relatively easy to establish. The Danish Labour Inspectorate publishes annually an overview of accidents and injuries in 49 sectors (two-digit DB93/NACE-code level), and this overview was detailed with kind help of the Inspectorate, i.e. the information was distributed on a larger number of sectors that could be identified by their 3-, 4- or 5-digit DB93/NACE-code. It should be remarked that the Danish DB93 sector code system is identical to the EU NACE-code system with respect to the first four digits, whereas the 5th and 6th digits are nationally specific.

The problem in using supply statistics was experienced by the project team already during the first efforts towards extending the database. Here, Statistics Denmark were asked to provide supply statistics for the plastic processing sectors, i.e. the sectors with the following NACE-codes:

Table 9. NACE-codes for plastic processing sectors in Danish statistics

Activity	NACE-code
Production of plastic products	252
Production of sheets, films, tubes, hoses and other profiles	2521
Production of sheets, films and other flat plastics	252110
Production of plastic tubes and hoses	252120
Production of plastic bars and profiles	252130
Production of plastic packaging	252200
Production of building articles	2523
Production of plastic sanitary articles	252310
Production of plastic building components	252390
Production of other plastic products	2524
Production of plastic office- and school products	252410
Production of table service and kitchen equipment	252420
Production of other plastic products	252490

A given company is in the statistics identified by the NACE-code that covers the main economic activity. This means that companies in other sectors also can be processing plastics, e.g. the chemical industry, toy producers, insulation companies, automotive and electronics industry etc. On the other hand the sectors in Table 9 may also have other activities than processing of plastics.

The information from Statistics Denmark showed that it was only possible to establish supply statistics on the four-digit NACE-code level, i.e. NACE-codes 2521, 2522, 2523 and 2524. In comparison, the statistics from the Danish Labour Inspectorate can be established on a five-digit NACE-code level, giving a possibility for an increased level of detail.

Furthermore, it turned out that the imported amounts in the supply statistics are allocated to both companies making their own imports and wholesale dealers, e.g. regional offices of multinational plastic producers, that subsequently sell the imported plastics to companies in all sectors. As about half of the amount of plastic raw material is imported by wholesale dealers, the actual amounts being processed in each of the four four-digit NACE-codes can only be calculated with a high degree of uncertainty.

In conclusion, the sector method described in EDIP97 is not well suited for handling sectors with a wide variety of products being produced, the main problems being achieving a sufficient level of detail as well as precision. It should be mentioned in this context that the above mentioned problems probably will be even more pronounced in sectors where there is both a Danish production and an import of raw materials, e.g. the steel industry.

It was therefore decided at the second phase of the project to develop an alternative method for sector assessments in the third phase of the project. This work has resulted in the revised method described earlier in the guidelines and the database that can be found in the appendix to the guidelines.

4.5 Future developments in WE-LCA

4.5.1 The short perspective

The described method gives the possibility of including the working environment along with the other effect types in LCA. A relatively extensive database has been developed and with this one of the most important barriers has been overcome.

As indicated previously there are however some limitations in using the method:

The calculations must for the moment being be performed in a separate spreadsheet.
Weighting following the principles in EDIP cannot be performed
Only the Danish working environmental conditions are used as the basis for the assessment.

None of these three limitations are so serious that they in advance exclude the use of the method or a further development.

The two first limitations can thus be solved fairly simple in a further development of the EDIP-method and the associated PC-tool.

4.5.2 The longer perspective

The third limitation – that the assessment is based on Danish working environmental conditions alone – must be solved by international co-operation. This naturally requires a longer period of time to be solved. The framework of the method is however of such nature that other countries can produce a similar database, although there will be differences from country to country in the way the statistical information on working environmental impacts is collected. The first step is therefore to spread the knowledge about the new method and subsequently create an international co-operation on improvement of the database and adapt the method to include other types of working environmental impacts.

4.5.3 The long perspective

In the even longer perspective the efforts should be devoted to increase the precision of the working environmental LCA. It is obvious that development of a broader, international, database will increase the precision and applicability of the method, but using process assessment as an integrated part of the method can increase the precision further.

The Danish participation in international method development must therefore also be open for the possibilities in this area. Of special interest in this context are work place assessments and working environmental accounting. These tools are being developed and used in many Danish companies and they may form the basis for a more precise assessment of the working environment, without being too demanding in terms of use of time and resources.

The final target for working environmental LCA is therefore a method that with a common and international database gives the possibility for companies of using their knowledge about working environmental conditions in an operational way, also in the life cycle context.