108
3 Understanding the LCA Community Itself
To develop our understanding of the LCA community, especially the corporate LCA
practitioners, we organized a number of workshops in various countries in 2012 and
again in 2014.
For this research, we worked together with a number of business partners of our
organization in Europe. We asked them to invite their corporate clients to come
together for an open discussion on how they see the future of LCA, what their challenges are, and how they cope with them. Of course we also asked them what kind
of features and tools would help them most. The meetings were organized in early
2012 and throughout 2014 with seven partners; see Table 9.1 .
The majority of the participants were LCA experts working in large multinationals but there were also some researchers and consultants present.
3.1 The Overarching Message
Many corporate LCA experts are telling us they have diffi culty communicating their
fi ndings to the internal stakeholders. One of the problems is that the results are not
well understood by their colleagues in marketing, research and product development. It is as if they operate in different worlds. LCA results do not really connect
to what their internal clients want to know. This means many are seeking ways to
drastically simplify results or translate them into guidelines.
Getting the results out and understood is a problem, getting data in is another big
problem. Often other departments are not really motivated to supply data. Getting
access to data held by the purchasing department, for example, can be very diffi cult
as they do not see the benefi ts.
The general picture that emerges is that the LCA department fi nds it diffi cult to
connect and to be relevant, while at the same time companies have committed themselves to improve the sustainability of products in a rational way. This seems to
imply that there is a disconnect between the ambitions of the companies and what
Table 9.1 Partners and participants in round tables
Country
Partner organization
Remarks
Sweden
Miljögiraff
Mixture of companies
and research institutes
Denmark
2.-0 LCA
High attendance: 10 companies
UK
SimaPro UK Ltd
Also consultants
France
EVEA
Focused on eco design
Italy
2B
Focus on luxury food companies
Germany
GreenDelta
In German language, only in 2012
USA
PRé North America
Only in 2014, several industry associations
M. Goedkoop et al.
3 Understanding the LCA Community Itself
To develop our understanding of the LCA community, especially the corporate LCA
practitioners, we organized a number of workshops in various countries in 2012 and
again in 2014.
For this research, we worked together with a number of business partners of our
organization in Europe. We asked them to invite their corporate clients to come
together for an open discussion on how they see the future of LCA, what their challenges are, and how they cope with them. Of course we also asked them what kind
of features and tools would help them most. The meetings were organized in early
2012 and throughout 2014 with seven partners; see Table 9.1 .
The majority of the participants were LCA experts working in large multinationals but there were also some researchers and consultants present.
3.1 The Overarching Message
Many corporate LCA experts are telling us they have diffi culty communicating their
fi ndings to the internal stakeholders. One of the problems is that the results are not
well understood by their colleagues in marketing, research and product development. It is as if they operate in different worlds. LCA results do not really connect
to what their internal clients want to know. This means many are seeking ways to
drastically simplify results or translate them into guidelines.
Getting the results out and understood is a problem, getting data in is another big
problem. Often other departments are not really motivated to supply data. Getting
access to data held by the purchasing department, for example, can be very diffi cult
as they do not see the benefi ts.
The general picture that emerges is that the LCA department fi nds it diffi cult to
connect and to be relevant, while at the same time companies have committed themselves to improve the sustainability of products in a rational way. This seems to
imply that there is a disconnect between the ambitions of the companies and what
Table 9.1 Partners and participants in round tables
Country
Partner organization
Remarks
Sweden
Miljögiraff
Mixture of companies
and research institutes
Denmark
2.-0 LCA
High attendance: 10 companies
UK
SimaPro UK Ltd
Also consultants
France
EVEA
Focused on eco design
Italy
2B
Focus on luxury food companies
Germany
GreenDelta
In German language, only in 2012
USA
PRé North America
Only in 2014, several industry associations
M. Goedkoop et al.