TABLE OF CONTENTS Increasingly these days it is important to understand resources, sustainability and environmental burden when looking at applications of chemicals. Consumers are becoming more aware and are making demands that force products to be more environmentally friendly. In response to this many industries have adopted environmental management procedures in which their products and manufacturing processes are examined with a view to becoming greener .
As such it is wise to stand back and take an overview of the role that a formulated product may play and the unavoidable effects that will result from a product's existence. An important approach to this is to make a cradle-to-grave assessment and see what demands are put on resources and the environment by the manufacture, use and disposal of the product. Other similar assessments, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), are also used but the principle is the same.
To carry out a cradle-to-grave assessment requires a good degree of thoroughness and an open mind for there is much complexity and many surprises. A product that appears at the planning stage to be environment friendly and using renewable resources may turn out to score less than one based on a non-renewable resource such as petroleum.
Unfortunately, as manufacturers are keen to move towards eco-labelling of their products there has been a tendency to steer a path in a favourable direction and this has done nothing for the reputation of such assessments. This is an area rife with creative accounting. However, cradle-to-grave assessment...
