Adoption of LCA as a decision making tool in German Electronic Industry
Student name: Ms Romita Roshan Pandita
Guide: Dr Arun Kansal
Year of completion: 2010
Host Organisation: Environmental Policy Research Centre, Freie University, Berlin
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Kirsten Jorgensen
Abstract: Over past many years considerable efforts have been made to integrate LCA in environmental policies i.e. to integrate environmental policies in each stage of the complete life cycle of a product, or in other words efforts. Though it has been years now but still more work is done to improve and make the methodologies more and more sophisticated and very less efforts have been put to analyse the actual implementation of such LCA as a decision making tool in the industry. The given study was carried out to explore the actual implementation of LCA by the industry, if there is any linkage between knowledge production and knowledge application, its main drivers and barriers, what does industry expects from science and government, future adoption pattern of such policies and also the extent of diffusion of such policies to India.
The survey was carried out in Germany and 60 questionnaires were sent across. Though there were contradictions on many issues but some common results included environmental policies are not the main driving forces instead risk analysis of newer products, hot spot identification and customer demand are the main drivers for the industry to carry out LCA while its complexity and lack of data came out to be as main barriers. Industry expects science to come up with a simpler and less sophisticated methodology while it wants government to provide some kind of positive incentives for carrying out such a tedious exercise. Though there are forces pulling from both the ends, the use of LCA is going to increase in near future though several transitions could be seen. The direct diffusion of such policies to India would not be a wise decision because of different environmental, social and economic status, in India such policies have to be mandatory because of worst environmental conditions at present. There is also need for a global life cycle policy that are transnational and not restricted to a particular region.
Keywords: Life-cycle approach, Life-cycle assessment, Life-cycle thinking(LCT), Environmental policies, German electronics industry
