Survey on the Use of LCA in European Chemical Industry

During 1997 a questionnaire was sent to 40 European chemical manufacturers representing different positions in the supply chain. 25 companies (62.5%) responded, of which 23 had been involved in LCA to some degree. The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions divided into four parts dealing with · the company's general attitude to environmental matters, · to which degree they had been involved in LCA and their opinions on LCA as a tool · Which methodological choices they had taken when using LCA, and · how LCA results were presented e.g. to ensure confidentiality In general, the European chemical industry has taken up the LCA methodology and is testing its applicability for their purposes, although they still feel the methodology is a bit immature. The resources devoted to LCA depends to a great extent on the company's position in the supply chain and on the size of the company. Many of the LCA's has been undertaken to comply with customers' requirements for LCA data, but also process development and marketing were important purposes of the work. Interestingly, in about 40% of the companies the LCA's actually revealed results that would not have been anticipated without doing the LCA. In general the results were interpreted directly from the inventory, but more than half of the respondents have either been testing or actually use some kind of impact assessment methodology, often also including local impacts. Further development seems to be desirable to support the use of LCA in decision making and for reaching consensus on impact assessment. Additionally, the companies think that it is important that LCA methodologies are replicable, and easy and fast to perform. To reach theses last goals, the industry plays a very important part themselves because we need experience and data.