Individually tailored consulting services for organizations in the public and private sectors in the field of Strategic Life Cycle Assessments.
We carry out strategic life cycle assessments of products, processes and organizations in order to champion examples of environmental excellence.
Our service
Analysing the potential environmental impacts of products and organizations has become a key strategic activity for a growing number of companies. Carrying out Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in accordance with the relevant international standards (ISO 14040:2006 – Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework, ISO 14044:2006 – Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines, ISO/TS 14072:2014 – Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines for organizational life cycle assessment) is the path to follow in order to produce reliable results to support decisions. However, there are a number of ways to carry out LCAs and the approach taken largely depends on the client’s objectives.
Spinlife has developed a model that combines product and organization LCAs and essentially transforms the results of an LCA into a support tool that can be used when drawing up business strategies. The advantage of this combination lies in the scope to give a more comprehensive – and therefore more solid – vision of the life cycle assessments on which actions can subsequently be based in order to boost the competitiveness of businesses.
Our service is structured as follows:
- Studying and measuring: we conduct critical analyses of the business contexts of our clients in order to gain an understanding of the expectations in their markets in terms of sustainability. We use an assessment model that has been developed by Spinlife thanks to contributions from research activities carried out with the University of Padua.
- Innovating and implementing: we conduct Life Cycle Assessments of our clients’ products, processes or entire organizations, calculating potential environmental impacts and benefits. This is done in accordance with the relevant ISO standards, such as ISO 14040:2006 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework), ISO 14044:2006 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines) and ISO/TS 14072:2014 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines for organizational life cycle assessment). We provide our clients with a research report that can be critically reviewed by a third party.
- Improving and certifying: we provide support during the critical review and the process of managing relations with the certification body. Spinlife will assist you until you have received certification or a third-party critical review. In addition, we manage arrangements with institutions and assess the possibility of accessing Ministerial programmes that recognize the environmental excellence of products, such as the Made Green in Italy initiative.
- Communicating: we provide technical support for communication initiatives to report the results of projects, drawing up dedicated summary documents to cater to the specific needs of clients.
The benefits
Adopting strategic life cycle assessment models for products and organizations can be the key to competitiveness for your products and bring the following benefits:
- If you have a critical review or certification of the results achieved, it helps to harness the sustainability of your products and your company.
- You can take part in a growing number of public calls for tenders that require certification of products and management systems as part of their Minimum Environmental Criteria.
It paves the way to Environmental Product Labelling such as Ecolabels and EPDs, which can harness your environmental performance. - It gives you clear, transparent and scientific understanding of the environmental issues associated with the products and services provided to the markets throughout their life cycles (from raw material extraction to end of life), so that you can plan improvement measures.
- Assessment models can be adopted in accordance with the international standards that promote management of environmental data about the products being examined: ISO 14040:2006 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework), ISO 14044:2006 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines) and ISO/TS 14072:2014 (Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines for organizational life cycle assessment).