21 st annual conference
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21st Annual Conference
Delivering sustainable solutions in a more competitive world
Mercury Lamps - Life Cycle Assessment for Product Stewardship
Peter Garrett – ERM New Zealand
15th October 2009
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Agenda
• Who is ERM?
• LCA and product stewardship
• Key points of LCA process
• Case study: Mercury lamps in NZ
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ERM – Worldwide Environmental Consultancy
350 staff in Australia and New Zealand
• ERM services in this area:
• Product Stewardship Accreditation Assessors (NZ MfE)
• Life cycle management (LCM) and assessment (LCA)
• Waste management
- Strategy
- Minimisation
- Technology appraisal
- Forecasting
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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
• ‘Cradle to grave’ environmental accounting
• exchanges of energy and materials with the environment at each stage of the life cycle
• emissions to air, land and water
• 1960s energy analysis, developed by SETAC in the 1980s and ISO in the 1990s (ISO 14040/44)
• Streamlined LCA simplifies the full-blown approach
• Carbon footprinting is streamlined LCA through consideration of only carbon (global warming impacts)
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LCA, Product Stewardship & Waste Management
• LCA is best-practice method for assessing environmental impacts for product stewardship and waste management:
• NZ Waste Minimisation Act supports life cycle approach under Product Stewardship
• EU thematic strategy on waste – life cycle approach
• EU Integrated Product Policy – life cycle approach
• UNEP Environment programme on Life Cycle Management
• Defra (UK) LCA assessments formally integrated into the Business cases for PFI for waste
• Harvard Business Review September 2009 – LCA needs to be a core business competence
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Impacts Across Value Chains
• Impacts occur at every stage of the product life cycle
• Controlling direct impacts can lead to ‘burden shifting’ and may be counter-productive
• Need to take an holistic view
INDIRECTDIRECT
RetailTransport Production DistributionStorage & Retail Transport
Storage & Consumption DisposalRaw
Materials
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Define the Life Cycle System
• Define aim of LCA
• Define product ‘equivalence’
• define study flow
• Set system boundary
• identify life cycle stages
• use appropriate cut-off
• Quantify the flows
• Calculate the impacts
• Interpret and assess results and options
• Data collection and selection is key:
• ensure consistency and transparent assumptions
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Effective Decision Support
• Benefits of LCA for Product Stewardship:
• Scientifically robust results
• Reduces risk
• Understand environmental benefits
• Supports decision making:
- inform policy
- inform marketing claims
- support green purchasing
- basis for awards/credentials
- use in product design/development process
- aid investment decisions (eg waste technology/manufacturing)
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LCA Applications
• Applications:
• An individual
• A product/service
• A site
• A business
• A sector
• A new enterprise
• Any choice
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Mercury lamps in NZ
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Background
• Fully ISO compliant LCA
• Aim to understand the environmental impacts of mercury-containing lamps to help inform potential policy under Waste Minimisation Act
• Inform the evidence base for discussions with stakeholders on policy options
• Series of three reports on mercury: (1) New Zealand Lighting Industry Product Stewardship Scheme (PHASE 1 Assessment) and (2) Review and Mercury Inventory for New Zealand 2008
• Issues surrounding:
- What are the impacts of mercury?
- Is a take-back scheme environmentally beneficial?
» What effect does take-back collection rate have?
» How does mercury-level effect the impacts?
- What effect will lamp lifetime and efficiency have?
• Links will be available at:
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Goal & Scope
1. Assess “typical” mercury-containing lamps in New Zealand
2. Determine whole-life environmental impacts:
• raw materials, import, lamp production, distribution, use, and waste management
3. Assessed over 100,000 hours of operation
• Results are not comparable across lamp types
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Life Cycle for Lamps
• Scenarios:
• Recovery and recycling rates of 0%, 9%, 50% and 80%
• Reduced mercury level by 20%
• Extended lifetime of 50%
• Increased operating efficiency 10%
ENERG
Y
SUP
PLY
S
YSTE
MS
OT
H
ER
PR
ODUCT
SYST
EMS
ENVIRONMENT: RESOURCES
ENVIRONMENT: AIR, LAND AND WATER
Raw material production
Usage
Lamp production
Lamp retail
Lamp distribution
Waste management
Incineration Landfill Recycling
Benefits of recycled materials
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Study Results – Not yet published!
• Full range of environmental impacts:
- depletion of resources;
- global warming;
- stratospheric ozone depletion;
- human toxicity;
- fresh-water and marine aquatic eco-toxicity;
- terrestrial ecotoxicity;
- photo-oxidant formation;
- acidification; and
- eutrophication.
• Result shown by:
• By life cycle stage (manufacture, transport, use, disposal, recycling/recovery)
• By lamp type
• Benefits of options assessed
• Issues of economics and of practicability (e.g. consumer engagement) are outside of the scope of this study
-2.00
-1.50
-1.00
-0.50
0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
1 1 2 2 3 3 Baseline E-Fuel Baseline E-Fuel Baseline E-Fuel
GW
P -
Sh
ort
to
ns
CO
2e
Production End-use Offset benefit
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Study Outcomes – Mercury Lamps in NZ
• Scientifically based results of environmental impacts
• Externally reviewed, ISO compliant, New Zealand specific
• Identify scale of environmental benefits across supply chain
• Of increased recycling/recovery
• Comparable within lamp types
• Prioritise where impacts/benefit arise in the life cycle
• Risk minimisation
• Inform government policy / targets / legislation
• Transparent and open information to industry
• Results published by end 2009
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Any questions?
Thank you for listening
21st Annual Conference
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