ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE-CYCLE ENGINEERING: A concept for ...

Helge Brattebø: "Environmental Life-Cycle Engineering" NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Liberec, Czech Republic, 20-24 Nov. 1995 1

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ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE-CYCLE ENGINEERING: A concept for proactive integration of life-cycle thinking in environmental engineering university programmes By professor Helge Brattebø.1 Presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop "A Network of Excellence and Partnership in Environmental Engineering and Pollution Prevention". Liberec, Czech Republic, 20-24 November 1995. SUMMARY The paper presents the concept of "Environmental Life-Cycle Engineering" as a preventative and systems based approach to environmental improvements in industrial society. The concept is motivated by present major changes in strategies for industrial environmental performance. It is also motivated by long-term needs in terms of environmental efficiency and multidisciplinar optimisation. This leads to the recognising of Industrial Ecology as a systems oriented strategy for how to approach environmental challenges in industrial society. The key element of present industrial environmental efforts is pollution prevention by cleaner production measures. However, there is a need to make improvements beyond the "good housekeeping" level, by integrating prevention and life-cycle thinking in technology management, in process and product design, and in the management of waste and by-products, all with a long-term perspective. Environmental life-cycle engineering asks for more attention to the integration of environmental concern as part of various engineering disciplines (design and operation in all relevant branches) as compared to the more traditional and reactive focus to environmental control and remediation options. It is now important that such principles are implemented as part of university programmes related to research and teaching.

1. INTRODUCTION The present strong change in environmental strategy in industry is driven by new types of pressure from the market and new regulation policies from government. This change is based on three key elements: 1) the recognition of systems (holistic) thinking; 2) the development and implementation of deregulation mechanisms; and 3) the growing concern for long-term environmental cost-benefit parameters and overall competitiveness in industrial companies. Systems thinking has been developed over a long time, and was given a strong push by the Brundtland commission (WCED, 1987). It means that one takes into consideration different system relationships (product system, environmental system, social system), e.g. the consequences of producing a given good, under wider system boarders (in space and in time). This is actually what is done when examining consequences to future generations and to the environmental and social system in large. The process of deregulation (the shift towards market-based regulation instruments) has just started. However, market forces seem to be surprisingly efficient in terms of combining self-justice, responsibility and flexibility, and are expected to play a major role in parallel to governmental regulation during the next few years. Finally, cost-benefit criteria will always be of highest importance to industrial companies. The recent trend was that environmental investments would only be accepted if the pay-back horizon (return on investment) was less than 3-5 years, and often as low as 1 year. However, at present more and more companies claim that overall competitiveness in the international market in fact will depend (success or failure) on the company's environmental policy and achievements. Through numerous industrial cases it is now obvious that pollution prevention pays, and that the implementation of avoidance technologies and cleaner production design and management options are much more cost-benefit efficient than traditional end-of-pipe control-oriented options. This was not the fact some few years ago. However, as governmental authorities today practise more and more strict waste discharge permits, combined with the implementation of the "polluter pays principle" and the "precautionary principle", traditional control-oriented options will simply be too expensive for the

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Helge Brattebö is professor of environmental technology at the Centre for Environment and Development (SMU), Norwegian University of Science and Technology - NTNU, Pavilion B, N-7055 Dragvoll Trondheim, Norway. (Tel: +47.73.598940, Fax: +47.73.598943, Email: Helge.Brattebo@smu.unit.no)


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company, particularly in the long run. This last element is probably the most important driving force for the shift towards pollution prevention at present. If seen in a long-term historical perspective, the rapid evolution of these three elements during recent few years is really representing a change in paradigm for industrial production and environmental values. Only few years ago the acceptable strategy was to optimise industrial profit and environmental parameters separately (by accepting "unavoidable" end-of-pipe environmental control investments in order to reduce the harmful potentials of production waste). Today this strategy is about to be replaced by an integrated strategy, where economic and environmental parameters are to be optimised concurrently. During a period of four decades the industrial environmental management views have developed from focusing dilution of waste discharges to focusing the environmental characteristics of the product itself. "The solution to pollution is dilution" was the thinking of the 50's and 60's. During the 60's and 70's this was replaced by "pollution control is the solution to pollution", as industrial production facilities were forced to meet stricter national regulation on waste and emission reductions. In the late 80's this view again was replaced by "pollution prevention is the solution to pollution", in which one was looking for first generation prevention options in the design of manufacturing processes and inhouse handling of materials and waste streams. Finally, the present emerging view is that "not producing is the solution to pollution". This view reflects two important dimensions. First, one should aim at reducing the general level of product consumption in our affluent society by producing less goods. Second, one should avoid harmful products by product redesign and material substitutions, and one should close the material cycles in society by the development and implementation of material and energy recycling technologies and product or component re-use services. The logistics and concepts which are referred to in this paper are given a more extensive outline in a report recently published by the University of Trondheim (Brattebø, 1995). 2. ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY AND SYSTEMS THINKING Systems thinking requires that a company should consider an environmental problem as part of a larger system, i.e. one has to enlarge the system borders in two dimensions, time and space. Enlarged system borders in time implies that one should address environmental problems on a long-term basis with respect to external premises or environmental and social consequences. Enlarged system borders in space implies that one has to consider premises or consequences in other sectors or parts of society, or in other geographical areas. When we today claim that environmental problems take a more global and long-term characteristic (e.g. acid rain, climate change, ozone layer depletion, etc.), it is clear that environmental issues grow in complexity and that they should be met by applying countermeasures on the basis of a systems perspective.

Effort avoidance monitoring control remediation 2000

Figure 1:

2010

2020

2030

2040

Time

U.S. White House technology development scenarios.


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First, let us take a look at the time dimension. The wide area of environmental technology may be classified in different ways. The U.S. White House, in cooperation with the National Science and Technology Council, has recently presented two important strategy reports where future directions of environmental technology development are discussed (U.S. White House 1994 and U.S. White House 1995). They group such technologies in 4 categories: Avoidance technologies; Monitoring and assessment technologies; Control technologies; and Remediation and restoration technologies. While remediation, restoration, and control technologies are playing the key role today this is expected to change during few decades, see Figure 1. Avoidance technologies will dominate environmental investments in the next century. They are designed to avoid the production of environmentally hazardous substances or alter human activities in ways that minimise damage to the environment. These technologies include equipment, processes, and process sensors and controls designed to prevent or minimise the generation of pollutants, hazardous substances, or other damaging materials, as well as technologies used in product substitution or in recycling and recovery of useful raw materials, products, and energy waste streams. Avoidance can be achieved by operational changes including the use of materials, practices, or procedures that reduce or eliminate waste, or institutional changes including employee training programmes, total quality management programmes, just-in-time inventories, "green" procurement policies, full-cost accounting, and life-cycle assessment. Avoidance may include incremental changes to existing manufacturing infrastructure, or substantial changes on the basis of new design and production strategies ("design for the environment").

FOCUS

1970 Exploitation of raw materials

Preparation & parts production

Consumption Production of goods & services

External recycling

2020


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Figure 2: 50 years of environmental focus moves towards systems thinking Second, let us take a look at the space dimension. Some years ago environmental problems were often understood and dealt with in a local context, although national and international coordination was given high priority since the 70's. Industry was more or less used to solve their environmental problems "inhouse", i.e. within the production facility borders, in order to deal with local HES (health, environment and safety) problems. HES activities have expanded significantly during recent years, and as a result they have given important and needed improvements on many fields. However, such activities have not been based on systems thinking at society level. The systems perspective was incorporated only when one started focusing product life-cycle assessment (LCA), design for recycling, materials recycling and product reuse, and energy recycling, across sectors of the economy and within or across product chains, and across production and consumption stages in society. Overall objectives of such strategies are the closure of the materials cycle and a reduced pollution intensity in society. Figure 2 illustrates how the focus for environmental thinking is (and will be) enlarged during some few decades. In the 70's the industrial focus of evironmental improvements was limited to the production or manufacturing stages. Industry was not concerned about materials recycling and even not so much with waste management in general. Today industry is more or less forced to start thinking of what happens with their products during consumption and after the product's useful life. Internal and external materials recycling is a main objective at present, along with waste reduction and pollution prevention options (cleaner production). During a few decades one will have to consider the whole system from exploitation of raw materials through preparation, production and consumption stages, in an integrated way in order to minimise environmental degradation, health impacts, and the excessive use of resources. In such a policy closing the materials cycle will be a key strategy. 3. LONG-TERM NEEDS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EFFICIENCY The rationale behind the long-term scenarios is that if the global claim on the ecological capacity of the Earth (which is of a limited and given magnitude, depending on the contemplative environmental factor or parameter and certain long-term sustainability criteria) continues to increase rapidly, then the given ecocapacity limit at some time will have to be exceeded. For some parameters we may even today be close to an ecocapacity limit. If this is a general trend, one will have to change the overall environmental technology strategies very soon. The growing population and prosperity levels in some regions (Far East and Latin America) strengthen this argument. There are also other arguments for making strategy changes, e.g. industrial case experiences clearly demonstrate that it also is profitable to focus waste reduction and the implementation of avoidance technologies at local scale. The U.S. White House concluded that there are enough arguments for such changes, and the resulting consequence is that avoidance technologies will have to be the strategy number one in future. If one accepts that sustainable development and the use of environmental technology will have to be based on limited global or regional ecocapacities, there are some more questions to be asked: What are the characteristics of ecocapacities? What are their magnitude? How do ecocapacities depend on future regional and global growth in human population and in economic welfare? Where are we today compared to such limits? Such questions were carefully examined in a research study by the Advisory Council for Research on Nature and Environment in The Netherlands, titled "The ecocapacity as a challenge to technological development" (RMNO, 1992). Based on the principles from the Brundtland commission and the Rio Declaration, RMNO defined a set of sustainability criteria as the fundament for determining the characteristics and magnitude of ecocapacity limits. This was related to 7 different environmental impact parameters: global consumption of oil; global consumption of natural gas; global consumption of coal; global consumption of copper; global consumption of biomass; global emission of CO2; and global acid deposition. RMNO concluded that in a sustainable world, the per capita emissions of


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pollutants and consumption of vital resources in the Western, industrialised world will have to be generally reduced to something less than 10 percent of present levels. I.e. we are talking of introducing changes which may reduce the overall environmental impact by more than 90 percent, from now to year 2040 which was the time horizon of the study. The models by RMNO will of course not be able to handle hidden changes in future society or in future technology, and there are always relevant criticism to such modelling exercises. However, the order of magnitude for required improvements is so much larger than what is achievable by present technology strategies, that it should be obvious both to governments and industry that it is necessary to adopt responsible care attitudes towards advancing a wide spectre of avoidance technologies in the years to come. On the basis of the RMNO results the Dutch Committee for Long-Term Environmental Policy (CLTM) has published a book where Leo Jansen wrote a most interesting paper on technology and sustainability (Jansen, 1994). Jansen's message is that the use of environmental technology in industry and society has to be changed so that the overall production and consumption is within the ecocapacity of the world. Jansen suggests that the contribution of technology may be optimised by three approaches, se Figure 3. Track I Janson called the "environmental protection (or care)" track. It attacks short-term needs, e.g. by stopping leaks and streamlining current production systems. It emphasises the "organisation for environmental quality of processes and products" combined with full application of supporting technologies for process monitoring and control, and periodical use of environmental audits. This approach has potentials for an increase in environmental efficiency by a factor of about 1.5 within a few years. Track II was called the "environmental technology" track. It includes the improvement and application of existing technology, both avoidance and control related, to realise a better utilisation of the environmental capacity. The potential for environmental efficiency improvements is estimated to a factor of 1.5 to 4 within a period of about 20 years. However, Jansen states that such gradual improvements will not be able to reverse the ongoing process of deterioration of the environmental capacity. Track III was called the "sustainable technology" track. It does not concern improvements in existing technologies, but finding new technological combinations and concepts by which the future required increase in environmental efficiency can be realised. Depending on the environmental parameter under consideration and a number of assumptions, the increase in environmental efficiency through sustainable technology should be a factor of 10 to 50.

Environmental Efficiency Factor boundary of current technology

100 50 20 10 5 2 1

I

Depending on: •population and prosperity •North-South distribution •contemplative environmental parameter

III II

Time 1990

Figure 3:

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

A three-way track (I-III) for pushing technology towards sustainability


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The conclusion from this study emphasises the need for a shift in strategies. It is a well-known fact that technology development takes time, and often long time. One has to push the process of innovation successfully through four phases: research and exploration, development, demonstration, and finally implementation. In order to innovate fundamentally new concepts and technologies (sustainable technologies) which are to be implemented during the next few decades, one simply has to start focusing such problems and possibilities in today's research and exploration projects in industry, universities and research institutes. I.e. one has to add long-term motivated development projects to the traditional shortterm ones which dominate present R&D activities. An interesting example of such is the "Dutch Sustainable Technology Development Programme" (STD) which is a governmental and interdisciplinary research programme aiming at learning how to innovate towards sustainable technology. Leo Jansen claims that "the first challenge to society is to shape a consensus for a joint effort to reach sustainable development by creating conditions for development of sustainable technologies". He demonstrates the urgency of a contribution of technology towards sustainability and a break in the current trend of technology development. He also states that the challenge to technology is to fulfil societal needs within the ecocapacity of the world. Strong interactions between technology, culture and structure determine nature and shape of actions to be undertaken in technology development from the basic attitude that a contribution of technology to sustainability is essential but (by far) not sufficient, see Figure 4. The three elements of Figure 4 characterise development in society in a strong mutual interaction. A radical change in technology, e.g. to improve environmental efficiency, in fulfilling societal needs can never be regarded without taking the interactions with culture and structure into consideration. The "acceptability" of environmentally efficient technical means is directly connected to the economic conditions in the market and the demands in society. In this context it should be well understood that these conditions and demands are not at all static and may change radically as a result of environmental and political changes. On the other hand, the cultural and structural requirements must be met if specific technological strategies and systems should be able to function well. The overall message is that in future it will be more crucial to optimise environmental solutions by combining theoretical and practical knowledge from technology, the social sciences and the humanities concurrently.

CULTURE

STRUCTURE social needs

which?

how to organise? social functions

with which means?

TECHNOLOGY

Figure 4:

Interactions culture-structure-technology in making environmental improvements as response to social needs.


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4. CLOSING THE MATERIALS CYCLE All material economic production involves the transformation of energy and mass, which are subject to certain natural laws. The understanding of basic thermodynamic principles is essential to understand the relations between economy and ecology, and particularly when applying any broadly technological approach (such as that of cleaner production) to address the environmental problems arising from the economic system of production and consumption. 1st law:

"When mechanical work is transformed into heat or heat into work, the amount of work is always equivalent to the quantity of heat"

2nd law:

"It is impossible by any continuous self-sustaining process for heat to be transferred from a colder to a hotter body"

The first law of thermodynamics is a conservation law which tells us that energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form. The second law is often quoted, but less often fully understood. It concerns the quality or availability of energy, and the way this is changed during the process of transformation. An equivalent formulation of this law is that - despite the first law - it is impossible to transform heat energy (at a uniform temperature) into an equivalent amount of work. The second law therefore imposes qualitative constraints on the transformations not revealed by the first law, as energy states are continually degraded (from high quality to low quality or equivalently from high availability to low availability) through the process of transformation. Although the same quantity of energy exists after the transformation as before it, a certain proportion of the available energy has been "dissipated" through the transformation process and is no longer available to perform work or engage in subsequent transformations. An isolated system will thus move towards a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where there is no driving force for activity in terms of available energy. Conversely, the maintenance of a system away from this stage is reliant on a continuing input of high-quality (available) energy, e.g. solar energy. The second law postulates the existence of a function of state called "entropy", which is the capacity factor for isothermally unavailable energy. In most systems entropy production will be positive, i.e. there is a net positive entropy production which indicates that the quality of (or availability of high-quality) energy has been reduced. This reflects that there is some lost work in the system, work that could and should have been used for useful purposes as much as possible. Thus one should aim to "minimise the generation of lost work" by optimising the efficiency of transformation processes. W lost = T . ∆ S = T . (∆ Se + ∆ Si) where, W lost is the lost work, T is the absolute temperature, ∆ S is the net entropy production which comprise an external and an internal part. ∆ Se denote the flow of entropy due to interchanges with the surroundings, and ∆ Si denote the contribution due to changes inside the system. Entropy production is also relevant to matter, and this is illustrated when entropy is associated with the degree of "disorder" or dissipation of materials in the system (Jackson et. al., 1993). The increase in entropy associated with the 2nd law indicates that thermodynamic transformations are characterised by increased dissipation of matter through the system. For a closed system, this tendency to dissipation will lead to a mixing and dilution of basic materials in the system. In all systems, energy and material transformations tend to occur in such a way as to reduce the available energy in the system and to increase the dissipation of materials through the system. In a system open to the interchange of energy or materials with its surroundings, the tendency of the system to move towards thermodynamic equilibrium can only be offset by importing high quality energy from outside the system and exporting entropy from the system. In such a context photosynthesis must be regarded as the most important productive process on Earth. It is the ultimate source not only of high-quality energy supply to ecosystems but also of all


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biological capital (renewable resources) used by human economy. Energy is required specifically to counteract the dissipative tendency of material flow, and the global ecosystem has developed a complex, interactive network of material cycles in order to accomplish this task. Since useful energy is carried (for all but autotrophs) in material form, survival depends on the existence of these "anti-entropic" cycles. The respiratory function of biomass converts high-entropy carbon dioxide into low-entropy carbon, using the photosynthetic conversion of high-quality energy from the sun, which is a striking example of important anti-entropic cycles at global scale. This also shows that ecosystems are both driven by and regulated by thermodynamic principles. The economic system is remarkably similar to an ecosystem in certain fundamental respects. Both systems are open, thermodynamic systems, interchanging energy and materials with their surroundings. However, the thermodynamic principles - which appear to provide strict constraints over ecological systems - provide no such regulatory function on the actual behaviour of the economic system. It seems that we have freed ourselves from the constraints of nature, on the one hand, while remaining bound by an immutable theory on the other. The present trend towards recycling is a step to minimise unavailable material and entropy increase, but it is difficult to create an efficient recycling system for more than a limited number of materials within the industrial economy (particularly given types of polymers and metals). A process can, of course, be designed to concentrate its wastes, reuse everything possible, and eventually store within industrial limits (system boundary) only the absolute minimum that cannot be reused. Apart from economic limitations, this is in many cases technical feasible; the economic difficulties lie in the fact that the cost of treatment of a low-quality raw material rises sharply with the decreasing concentration of useful material in the waste. Therefore, pollution prevention options seem more favourable than waste recycle options. On a long-term basis, however, one has to look for possibilities of creating fundamental changes in industrial society as a whole. Allan Johansson claims that there are two conceptual possibilities, and obviously one should use both in the search for future overall system improvements (Johansson, 1992): 1.

2.

We create, in a thermodynamic sense, a closed industrial system which exchanges only energy (no material) with nature, and all material flows are confined to the system. Product flows return and are reprocessed in a truly recyclable manner. We develop an industrial production system totally compatible with nature, "soft" technologies using renewable raw materials and biodegradable products.

The concept proposed by Johansson should be regarded more an aiming point than an achievable state, and he claims that the conclusion in practice is to take advantage of the efficiency of our present production knowledge combined with biocompatible products in order to, on the one hand, satisfy the enormous production volumes required and, on the other hand, avoid the insurmountable difficulties linked to the requirement of total recycling. Also the notion of good quality products with long lifetimes and worth maintenance by high-technology products deserves attention. Finally, the most direct method for changing the situation for better lies in changing consumer habits (choice of products) as well as the willingness to handle wastes in a more conscientious manner. Figure 5 illustrates the ways of material recycling in the linear economy where products are the carrier of material and environmental qualities (impact) through resource extraction, production and consumption in society. Closed-loop recycling is recycling within the subsystem boarders of industry, while open-loop recycling is recycling and reuse from consumer markets back to production stages at different levels of materials preparation. The actual level of recycling at present is limited. The leading nation is Japan, who recycles about 50% of its municipal wastes. In some European countries, recycling of selected materials is quite successful. The lessons from industrialised economies indicate that there are significant obstacles to the success of recycling, both economic and physical. Important economic obstacles are: short-term


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economic assessments; high transport and collection costs; and of course the separation between private environmental benefits and social environmental costs ("the tragedy of the commons"). An important physical obstacle is the dissipative nature of many products or materials, e.g. chemical products like pesticides, fertilisers, paints, treatments, dyes, and additives in pharmaceutical products like soap, detergents, or disinfectants. For materials where dissipation is extensive, energy requirements will be much too large to allow for closure of the material cycles on an open-loop basis.

Labour

Resources

Capital

Production

Consumption

closed-loop recycling open-loop recycling extraction wastes

Figure 5:

production wastes

consumption wastes

Open-loop and closed-loop recycling in the linear economy

5. INDUSTRIAL RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Perspectives as given above now begin to penetrate industrial strategic and operative behaviour in many western countries, at least in some few proactive companies. Very many companies have several years experience in handling HES (Health, Environment, Safety) issues in a systematic and efficient way. Also several companies have started introducing and implementing cleaner production and waste minimisation programmes locally within their production facilities during the last 5-10 years. A recent development is that leading companies claim to adopt the "industrial ecology" concept, where the aim is to take a systems or more holistic perspective (enlarge the system boundaries in time and space) and base their strategies on principles from the dynamic behaviour and interactions within ecosystems (Frosh 1989, Ayres 1994). The system time boundaries of a company's strategy is enlarged when the company starts taking into account product and production consequences to long-term environmental impacts, in addition to present short-term strategies. Similarly, the system space boundaries will be enlarged when the company starts considering product redesign as a consequence of life-cycle assessment (LCA) and product-chain relations across sectors and industrial branches. The traditional approach to industrial environmental problems is the reactive strategy, where the company takes an end-of-pipe perspective, involving external specialists, in order to reduce a given emission or environmental impact. Recent more ambitious approaches are the receptive, constructive or even proactive strategies, where end-of-pipe perspectives are replaced by process-, product- and product chain-oriented perspectives, driven by social needs rather than isolated industrial interests. Such a shift of attention from end-of-pipe to "upstream anticipation" and preventative approaches has several important implications for the way companies and governmental authorities behave and interact. It strongly affects the choice of management and technology options in industry, and it also strongly affects the principles and policies of environmental regulation from government. As technological options now have to be decided at earlier stages of design work, based upon upstream anticipation of far downstream and dissipative environmental consequences, it is more and


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more difficult to apply the traditional command-and-control regulation policy. New regulation policies are being developed, based upon consensus-seeking and market-based regulation instruments (Andersen 1994). Such policies include the charging policies which prescribe no mandatory measures, but establish a system of economic incentives by which to charge polluters for their emissions, for their input of raw materials or for their products. They also include covenant policies where the emphasis is on reaching a voluntary agreement with the polluters on targets for pollution control. One should also consider third party environmental management systems and environmental auditing accreditation (EMAS, BS 7750, ISO 14000-series, etc.) important instruments in the change to marked-based regulation policies. The general effect of such changes is that government will leave more detailed decisions to industrial companies themselves, while the companies will have to prove that they do take care of their own environmental challenges in a systematic way, focusing prevention and avoidance options, and that they are able to achieve continuous environmental performance improvements. In the search for environmental performance improvements, driven by preventative perspectives, one must remember that there is a hierarchy of technological options related to waste management. Waste reduction and pollution prevention related options are at the top of this hierarchy, while subsequent options are external (open-loop) waste recycling and re-use, waste treatment, controlled waste disposal, and finally uncontrolled waste disposal or release. Within the high priority group of options (waste reduction and pollution prevention) one should first seek activities to reduce mass consumption or change to less polluting activities, then focus environmentally friendly product design (composition, durability, etc.), then the handling of material and waste streams in production processes, and finally focus process design itself (conversion and separation efficiency, process stability, reactor design, etc.). During recent years there is a large number of industrial cases demonstrating how to perform cleaner production projects along these lines. The "waste minimisation assessment" (or opportunity assessment) is an important element of such projects, as proposed by U.S. EPA (Freeman 1990). This is a powerful instrument to reveal cost-efficient prevention options at meso-scale (production facility level). In the next turn, it would be necessary to apply more theoretical methods, based on thorough technological and scientific insight, in order to achieve higher levels of environmental efficiency by longterm motivated technology development. There is a large (and unrealised) potential for such improvements both at the meso-scale and the micro-scale (reactor level). Industrial symbiosis experiences on the interchange of waste streams among different companies located within a given industrial park (Kalundborg in Denmark and Nova Scotia in Canada) also demonstrate that there is such a potential on macro-scale. 6. THE "ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE-CYCLE ENGINEERING" CONCEPT On the basis of the concepts and ideas that we have presented in the paragraphs above, it is possible to headlight a new overall concept for the understanding of preventative environmental engineering as an area. I will call this the "Environmental Life-Cycle Engineering" concept, as it focuses both environmental concern and life-cycle thinking as integrated parts of engineering, see Figure 6 below: The concept emphasises that we have to regard preventative environmental engineering as an area that should penetrate relevant fields of technology management and engineering design. Under this meaning environmental engineering is not a separate engineering discipline, however, it is an area that takes care of the "Gaia" values as an integrated part of other engineering disciplines. What does it help if the 5 percent of environmental engineers do their best to solve environmental problems if the rest 95 percent of engineers do not care? We have to avoid this phenomenon in future. The environmental life-cycle engineering concept comprise four main components: Environmental life-cycle technology management; Sustainable product design; Cleaner production process design; and Technologies for recycling. The overall effort is directed both towards production stages and consumption stages. It is important to minimise environmental impacts both by production and consumption efforts, and one should remember the interactions between culture, structure and


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technology in such efforts, particularly in the consumption efforts. Today most efforts deal with the production stages, but in future more emphasis will have to be given to consumption management. However, production and consumption management should be considered elements along two directions of the one and only overall strategy, i.e. the development towards sustainable societies. Industrial ecology, as a way of thinking, is the driving principle to achieve such improvements. It challenges us in enlarging the system boarders in time and space, and it also challenges us to implement cyclic thinking in local technology development projects in all parts of society. As shown in the figure, there is a loop from production to consumption and back to production again, which is kept together by the "design for the environment" and "design for recycling" principles. This loop indicates that we also have two other important elements of the overall concept, i.e. to avoid downstream environmental impacts related to the products, and to maximise materials and energy recycling. Recycling options should be used whenever possible, as a parallel strategy to waste reduction and pollution prevention options in the production stages.

ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE-CYCLE TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT Production Management

Consumption Management

DRIVING PRINCIPLE: "Industrial Ecology" SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT DESIGN DESIGN PRINCIPLES: • "Design for the Environment" • "Design for Recycling" CLEANER PRODUCTION PROCESS DESIGN

Figure 6:

TECHNOLOGIES FOR RECYCLING

The "Environmental Life-Cycle Engineering" concept with industrial ecology as driving principle.

Technology management is a wide and important area. The message is to focus more the environmental issues (equally relevant as economic or quality issues) as part of technology management, both environmental problems related to present technology and particularly environmental options or possibilities related to future technology. Second, one should recognise the importance of life-cycle and systems thinking in environmental issues, particularly when managing technology development projects. We have earlier in this paper shown the relevance of material and energy cycles, as a basis for applying thermodynamic principles in optimising closed-loop and open-loop recycling. Technology management should emphasis waste minimisation, the use of resources, system and equipment efficiency, ecocapacity limits, social needs and barriers, all in a long-term perspective. One important clue to success is to regard the product (at various stages) as the carrier of environmental qualities. This opens up for a new


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strategy where the development of an environmentally driven materials policy is the essential element at the macro-scale, as the product is also the carrier of materials. Such a materials policy could include the following efforts: phasing out dissipative uses of toxic materials; phasing out emissions of persistent, synthetic materials; reducing raw material extraction and consumption; ensuring sustainable use of renewable resources; optimising materials use with respect to product life; ensuring full life-cycle assessment to be applied to material choices; and optimising material flows with respect to natural material cycles (Geiser 1993, Jackson 1993).

REFERENCES Ayres R.U.: "Industrial Metabolism: Theory and Policy", In B.R. Allenby and D.J. Richards (Eds.): "The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems", National Academy Press, Washington 1994. Brattebø H.: "Industrial Production and Sustainability - A conceptual framework for making environmental improvements in industry", Centre for Environment and Development (SMU), Univ. of Trondheim, SMU Report no. 4/95, Trondheim, 1995. Frosh R.A.: "Industrial ecology: a philosophical introduction", Proceeding of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1989. Geiser K.: "Rediscovering Materials Policy", In K. Geiser and F.H. Irwin (Eds.): "Rethinking the materials we use - A new focus for pollution policy", World Wildlife Fund report, Washington, 1993. Jackson T.: "Principles of Clean Production - developing an operational approach to the preventive paradigm", In T. Jackson (Ed.): "Clean Production Strategies", Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, 1993. Jackson T. et al.: "The 'Biophysical' Economy - aspects of the interaction between economy and environment", In T. Jackson (Ed.): "Clean Production Strategies", Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, 1993. Jansen L.: "Towards a sustainable future, en route with technology!" In Dutch Committee for LongTerm Environmental Policy (Ed.): The Environment: Towards a Sustainable Future", Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1994. Johansson A.: "Clean technology", Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, 1992. Skou Andersen M.: "Governance by Green Taxes - Making pollution prevention pay", Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1994. U.S. White House, Office of Science and Technology Policy: "Technology for a Sustainable Future - A Framework for Action", Report from the Environmental Technology Strategy Staff, Washington D.C., July 1994. U.S. White House, Interagency Environmental Technologies Office: "Bridge to a Sustainable Future National Environmental Technology Strategy". Washington D.C., June 1995. WCED (World Commision on Environment and Development): "Our Common Future", Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1987 Weterings R.A.P.M. and Opschoor J.B.: "The Ecocapacity as a Challenge to Technological Development", Advisory Council for Research on Nature and Environment (RMNO), Rijswijk, The Netherlands, April 1992.