Methodologies for environmental aspects assessment

• Autor(a) principal: Teixeira, Catarina Brandão
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/24067
• topic: Assessment methodologies; Environmental aspects; ISO 14001; Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental increasing awareness and the demand for environmental protection fed the need for the development of internationally recognized standards and regulations, such as ISO 14001. The new version of the present standard emerges on 2015 (ISO 14001:2015), including the recommendation of using life cycle thinking perspective upon the assessment of the organization’s environmental aspects – considered so far one of the most difficult phases to accomplish amongst the environmental certification. The present study takes place on a tire manufacturing industry where a LCA-based methodology is to be developed and proposed - according to the collected data about their activities, services and products - in order to stress its efficiency, in opposition to the already qualitative/semi-quantitative methodology applied on the organization. Ultimately, the proposed methodology of the present study combines a LCA-based quantitative assessment, a qualitative assessment (concerning legal compliance and stakeholder’s perspective) and a risk degree analysis. This combination guarantees the evaluation of the whole framework of inputs and outputs related to the life cycle of a tire. It seeks to provide a standardized and scientifically accepted method, able to reach reliable, stringent and reproducible results. Indeed, it is effective on lowering the subjectivity inherent to the majority of the assessments currently applied on environmental aspects assessment, as well as raising the environmental relevance assigned to those aspects. For all this reasons, the suggested methodology under study might be a suitable option for the present organization, as well as for other companies to adopt.