WHY COMMUNICATE?
The aim of an LCA study does not always include a communication outlet outside the client organization. When the purpose of the study is to identify "bottlenecks" along the life cycle of its product/service or when it is intended to compare two (or more) alternative energy production plants within its own plant or different product packaging systems, communication to the outside world is not indispensable and may not be foreseen.
From our experience, communication outside the environmental performance of your product/service (even when it was not initially planned) is a worthy culmination of the effort made to complete the LCA study.
WHAT AND HOW TO COMMUNICATE
Once a company has the results of the LCA life cycle assessment of its product/service, it has a wide choice of tools to communicate its performance externally, that is the environmental impact indicators related to its products/services.
A couple of preliminary questions need to be answered in order to find your way through the various proposals for communication tools:
- Do you want to communicate a single environmental impact indicator to the outside world or do you want to communicate a set of impact indicators (more or less wide)?
- Do you want to have the indicator or set of environmental impact indicators to be communicated validated/certified by an external body (OdC – Certification Body)?
The answer to these questions depends on a number of factors in the context which must be well identified and analysed: communication reference targets (for example: final consumer, large-scale distribution, only certain customers, etc.), reference market (for example: local, national, European, world), modes and means of communication (web, social, media, paper publications, videos) also with reference to already implemented systems of our competitors.
Once you have answered these questions and analyzed the context you can proceed with the environmental communication path.
WHAT COMMUNICATION TOOLS
Below we propose standard communication tools that can lead to environmental product certifications, but we keep in mind that specific personalized communication paths can be conducted for each company.
Single indicator communication tools:
- Carbon Footprint
- Water Footprint
- Specific environmental claims
Communication tools with indicator sets:
- EPD
- PEF