Product Life-Cycle Assessment: Calculating Products' Pollution
source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125176415696374409.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
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Concerns about greenhouse gases and other environmental hazards have spurred governments and companies to try to reduce the environmental impact of everything from auto fuels to water bottles. The first step in doing that is to assess the pollution those products impose on the Earth.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.4)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s most recent environmental effort -- a bid to tag all of its products with information about their environmental impact -- will force hundreds of its suppliers to inventory their pollution, which many expect will create a boom for the pollution-counting profession.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.5)
[Computer models are used to] process information about the energy and resources consumed by making, using and disposing of a product. At each stage, a product's effects on the soil, water and air are tracked to come up with what is known as a life-cycle assessment.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.6)
At New Balance, a Boston-based maker of sneakers and athletic clothing, a "green team" has begun calculating the environmental cost of the plastic soles used in the company's shoes as well as the impact of shipping from New Balance's Asian factories. What the team has found so far suggests that the materials that go into the shoes, rather than the trip from overseas, take the bigger toll on the environment.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.8)
But the profession can be lucrative. Calculating the life-cycle impact of a single product can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Mr. da Silva [who oversees the U.S. division of a German environmental consulting company, PE International] said that starting salaries in his field average about $60,000. The first step in doing a life-cycle assessment is collecting data on the environmental impact of the different processes involved, from extracting raw materials to transforming them in a factory. Sometimes that means measuring emissions from a smokestack or a tailpipe, but the statistical information often comes from databases compiled by companies like PE International.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.10)
[more at the link...]
[IMAGE: nist.gov]
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.4)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s most recent environmental effort -- a bid to tag all of its products with information about their environmental impact -- will force hundreds of its suppliers to inventory their pollution, which many expect will create a boom for the pollution-counting profession.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.5)
[Computer models are used to] process information about the energy and resources consumed by making, using and disposing of a product. At each stage, a product's effects on the soil, water and air are tracked to come up with what is known as a life-cycle assessment.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.6)
At New Balance, a Boston-based maker of sneakers and athletic clothing, a "green team" has begun calculating the environmental cost of the plastic soles used in the company's shoes as well as the impact of shipping from New Balance's Asian factories. What the team has found so far suggests that the materials that go into the shoes, rather than the trip from overseas, take the bigger toll on the environment.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.8)
But the profession can be lucrative. Calculating the life-cycle impact of a single product can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Mr. da Silva [who oversees the U.S. division of a German environmental consulting company, PE International] said that starting salaries in his field average about $60,000. The first step in doing a life-cycle assessment is collecting data on the environmental impact of the different processes involved, from extracting raw materials to transforming them in a factory. Sometimes that means measuring emissions from a smokestack or a tailpipe, but the statistical information often comes from databases compiled by companies like PE International.
(Campoy, A., 2009, September 1, par.10)
[more at the link...]
[IMAGE: nist.gov]
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