Identifying Product Aspects and Evaluate it's Impact to the Environment

[cheahga]

Hi All,

Does anyone of you ever conducted indentify the aspects of a product and evaluate it's impact to the environment?

Per ISO 14004:1996(E):
Product- Product refinement:
Aspect: Reformulation of the product to reduce its volume
Impact: Conservation of natural resources

Could anyone enlighten me on how to approach this?

Any inputs are most appreciated.

thanks

 

[Randy]

What you're referring to is a type of Life Cycle Assessment activity. LCA is not an exact science and requires you to perform what is commonly referred to as a SWAG (Scientific Wild Azz Guess).

You can use the FMEA approach, root analysis style or develop your own method.

What you need to do is identify the aspects associated with you product, work out what their potential short/long term impacts could be, and address them.

This type of work requires a great deal of cross functional teaming especially with some folks that have a good environmental engineering background (if you have them of course).

Get the LCA standards to help you out, or do some good I-net research.

 

[cheahga]

Thanks a lot, Randy.

I haven't obtained my guideline on the LCA standard yet!

Will look at yet once received.