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Greening bottom lines through Life Cycle Assessments
A Belgian SME in the B2B furniture industry has teamed up with BrightWolves to formulate a sustainability strategy for the upcoming three years. Fueled by ambition, the company envisions becoming a sustainability leader in the furniture industry. With our expertise, this vision is being translated into actionable steps grounded in scientific impact assessments.
Challenge
Sustainability is a complex jungle to navigate. Knowledge and data are key to making informed decisions. For a product-centric company, the initial hurdle involved conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a science-driven approach to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with a specific product throughout its entire life cycle. This assessment spans a significant portion of the value chain and encompasses diverse indicators such as global warming potential, land use, and water consumption. Analyzing this plethora of data becomes a challenge, particularly when data from suppliers or customers may be unreliable or unavailable. And even within internal processes, some data may still need to be measured or spread across multiple systems.
While the primary goal of the project was to enhance the environmental impact of the selected products, the results of the LCA also enabled us to improve the financial performance of our client in a short time span.
Approach
Completing a full Life Cycle Analysis for a product can take several weeks to even months depending on the complexity and availability of data sources. At BrightWolves, we always take the following pragmatic approach:
Start by making an environmental impact overview based on easily accessible data (mostly secondary data). This usually takes less time to find as it uses existing databases built to support LCAs. These estimates already indicate in which areas (upstream activities, own processes, downstream activities) a company can have the biggest impact.
Identify quick wins, and prioritize which areas need to be more elaborated using primary data sources (e.g., from suppliers).
Continue data collection and integration to assess your impact in more detail with primary data sources while already implementing quick wins.
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Impact
Apart from reducing the environmental footprint, our client swiftly acquired deep insights into untapped revenue streams embedded in their value chain and manufacturing processes. A 20% reduction in waste streams not only conserved hundreds of tons of raw materials but also directly influenced the company's financial performance.
On top of that, other actions were launched to enhance energy efficiency in the production line, optimize logistics, and explore alternative materials. This case clearly showed how environmental responsibility and financial gains can go hand in hand when doing it right.
