Cradle-to-gate
A cradle-to-gate assessment examines the environmental impact of products up to the point when they leave the factory.
Life Cycle Assessment – a Path to Reduced Environmental Impact
Truly sustainable products are determined not just by choosing and optimizing the most suitable production process, but also by what happens long before and long after that stage has been reached. Products impact the environment at every stage of their life cycle. The purpose of life cycle assessment at WACKER is to keep optimizing that impact.
We Improve Environmental Impacts Because We Care
The fate of a product and its impact on the environment are decided as soon as it embarks on its journey. WACKER uses life cycle assessments to optimize the environmental impact of its products right from the start. Because we believe that a happy ending for our climate needs the right beginning.
Sustainability from Birth – the Stages of the Life Cycle
Cradle-to-grave
A cradle-to-grave assessment focuses on the environmental impact of products up to the point of disposal.
Cradle-to-cradle
WACKER is striving to bring about a circular economy – and that means conducting cradle-to-cradle assessments that draw sustained attention to products and/or their raw materials throughout their life cycle, up to the point of reuse.
Keeping Tabs on Everything
Keeping an inventory of a product’s environmental impact entails keeping tabs on a great many different aspects all along the supply chain. Discover how comprehensive the inventory of a life cycle assessment is.
The Best Possible Impact
A life cycle assessment quantifies the inputs and outputs of material and energy during the value-creation process. These include raw materials, electricity, heat, waste and emissions.
The Short Route Is the Goal
Transportation and packaging also play a crucial role in a product’s environmental impact.
Focusing on the Elements
A life cycle assessment also evaluates the impact that products or their value-adding processes have on soil, air and water.
To establish the sustainability contribution made by our products, we analyze and evaluate their impacts in a life cycle assessment (LCA) as per ISO 14040/44. The focus here is on determining the environmental impact of raw materials acquisition, transportation, usage of intermediates and production itself. The goal is to take the current cradle-to-gate analysis and extend it to the entire life cycle using meaningful data provided by suppliers, customers and end users.
The most important data for the life cycle assessment are the global warming potentials (GWPs) of the various value-adding processes at each stage of the product life cycle. These data serve as a basis for environmental decisions taken for the following reasons:
- To make processes more effective and sustainable
- To compare new and existing products on the basis of their environmental impact
- To support environmental product declarations (EPDs) and product environmental footprints (PEFs) for product launches
- To review and optimize the sustainability contribution made by corporations on the basis of hard data
Life Cycle Assessment Meets the Mass Balance Approach
WACKER eco products are based on the mass balance approach. In order to subject them to a life cycle assessment, we had to expand the LCA approach to include the carbon mass balance. Thanks to this standards-compliant approach, we are able to calculate the environmental impact of mass balance products too. This innovative LCA tool takes into account both the substitution and compensation variants relating to fossil raw materials.
To the mass balance approachFind Out More about WACKER Eco Products That Have Undergone a Life Cycle Assessment!
Discover here which of our products have undergone a life cycle assessment.
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