37th LCA Discussion Forum: CARBON FOOTPRINT AND LCA

2009-02-23 / 14:29 from LCA Forum
37th LCA Discussion Forum: CARBON FOOTPRINT AND LCA: IDENTIFY THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO
REDUCE THE ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT OF CONSUMER'S GOODS

Dear colleagues with an interest in Life Cycle Assessment,

We are pleased to invite you to the 37th Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment. This
event will be held on Thursday, the 19th of March 2009 in Lausanne (hotel Alpha Palmier,
in front of the railway station) from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm (in English).

During this Discussion Forum, the main thematic treated will be: Carbon Footprint an
LCA: Identify the most effective way to reduce the environmental footprint of consumers'
goods.
Indeed, everything we buy, produce and use has an impact on the environment. The
increasing awareness about environmental threads, especially climate change, has let to
many initiatives to try to decrease the environmental impact of consumer goods.
Political and private initiatives propose to assign consumer goods with a carbon or
environmental label and companies and retailers are developing their own environmental
strategy, like offsetting part of the impact of products. In the meantime, Life Cycle
Assessment is more and more used by companies to assess and understand the environmental
impact of their products. The 37th discussion forum on Life Cycle Assessment aims to
deal with the role of LCA in achieving the most cost-effective reduction in
environmental impacts of consumer goods. Should we focus on carbon footprinting, like
the majority of the existing initiatives? Is it worthwhile to develop environmental
labelling?

Some retailers are aiming at quantifying the carbon footprint of all their products.
Others label the best in class products in terms of climate change impacts. A third way
followed is the use of LCA within the organization to guide professional purchasers and
to reveal the consumer from daily and instant choices to be made in the store. These
approaches are developed in parallel and seem all to have their merits and
disadvantages. This discussion forum will serve as a platform for retailers, companies,
consumers organizations and policy makers to discuss the approaches and to find way
forward how one can best profit from information gained with the help of LCA.

The DF 37 will especially discuss the following questions:

- To whom and how to communicate the results of LCA?
- How reliable are the actual labels?
- Can labelling of products be a good tool for LCA communication to public/distributor?
- Do label reach the consumers?
- Do consumers ask for numbers or traffic light systems?
- Are consumers ready to delegate responsibility to “their” retailer?
- How can LCA most cost effectively support the aim of reducing the environmental
footprint of food consumption?

Call for short presentations: the floor is open for short presentations of 5 to 10
minutes. If you are interested, please submit an abstract before March 7th at LCA
Discussion Forum secretariat (lcaforum@ecointesys.ch ).


The program describing the three discussion fora occurring in 2009 is joined in a pdf
file.


DF 38 will approach thematics around environmental assessment of future technologies
while DF 39 will discuss the questions on regionalization in LCA.

To send inscriptions and registrations and for information on abstracts submission,
please contact lcaforum@ecointesys.ch and / or send back the program voucher.



We hope this forum will be of interest for you and we are looking forward to welcoming
you in Lausanne.



Carole Dubois and Yves Loerincik



Carole Dubois
Environmental Analyst

e-mail: carole.dubois@ecointesys.ch

skype: Carole Dubois (aricia7)

Phone: +41 (0)21 693 91 93
Mobile: +41 (0)78 757 23 87
Fax: +41 (0)91 968 10 93 ecointesys - life cycle systems
PSE-A, EPFL
CH - 1015 Lausanne

www.ecointesys-lcs.ch

green-e, the first Internet-based tool to quantify the environmental performance of your
company: www.green-e.ch
green-e, le premier outil internet quantifiant les performances environnementales de
votre entreprise: www.green-e.ch

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