Expanded life cycle analysis reduces impact of operations
JohnsonDiversey has expanded the use of life cycle analysis to more fully understand and reduce the environmental impact of our operations and products.
When challenged to develop a way to include environmental impact
in the Global Value Chain decision-making process, our Environment Health and Safety team saw a new use for life cycle analysis. Historically, we have used life cycle analysis information to evaluate decisions about our product development. The process enables us to consider the entire range of environmental effects related to our raw materials, packaging materials, manufacturing, shipping, and warehouse operations as well as customers' use and disposal of the product and its packaging.
Our EHS team applied life cycle analysis to develop data that will inform our decisions about our sourcing, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics operations. The Global Value Chain environmental impact report provides environmental impact calculations drawn from JohnsonDiversey's data about environmental key performance indicators, such as energy and net water consumption, as well as raw material impact data.
JohnsonDiversey presented the Global Value Chain environmental impact reporting tool at the International Life Cycle Assessment conference held in Seattle, Washington, where it was seen as an innovative and user-friendly way to make environmental impact data easily accessible for decision making.
The Global Value Chain environmental impact reporting tool adds to the hard data we have available to assess a number of factors, including:
- raw material and packaging costs;
- supply availability;
- warehousing and transportation costs; and,
- the timing and location of shipments.
Using this data will help us optimize manufacturing locations and logistics. Likewise, we can use the data to explain to our customers the savings and environmental benefits they realize from reducing water and energy use.
In one typical case, we redesigned our product packaging to allow an additional layer of products to be added to a shipment pallet, enabling us to improve our transportation efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of the shipments. It also allowed customers to conserve storage space and reduce unloading time by receiving fewer shipments per year for the same amount of product.