Lifecycle Inventory: A Guidance Tool for Product, Process and Package Development, 1996 Life Cycle Assessment Symposium Proceedings

Bradley N. Johnson

The Procter and Gamble Company

Slide 1. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you, Mr. Cote, for the invitation to provide the perspective of Procter and Gamble on the subject of Lifecycle Inventory. At the outset, I like to remain mindful of an important distinction between LCI and LCA; short of being a lifecycle assessment, per se, wherein potential impacts on the environment are classified, characterized and assigned “value”, LCI is an accounting tool for resources, energy & materials, emissions & waste. LCI stops short of making product assessments and is certainly well short of the ability to make product comparisons. Still, I will describe LCI as a potentially useful instrument to be used internally by any forestry or paper products company. Through the course of this talk, I hope to lead us to two particular conclusions: 1) that LCI is for internal strategic guidance, particularly for improving the environmental profile of products, manufacturing processes and packaging, and 2) LCI is only one tool among many available to the environmental manager. It is not a stand-alone tool. Slide 2. First, though, let me take a moment to revisit the various unit operations that comprise a lifecycle approach to a process or product system. Generally, the primary purpose of a corporate enterprise is to make and deliver a product that will meet the needs and expectations of the customer or consumer. The operations with which this is achieved must be cost effective and resource efficient. Within this diagram, operations would include: raw material sourcing, processing, formulation and consumer use and disposal. The product and its associated energy, waste and material flows need also to be safe for workers, consumers and for the environment at site of manufacture and also during use and disposal. Indeed, our former CEO (Mr. E.L. Artzt) stated in 1994 that the interests of stockholders cannot be protected without also protecting the environment. Thus, all elements shown here are inherently integrated. The challenge, then, is to find an appropriate balance between all aspects of a products environmental profile, along with cost, performance, while preserving product safety.