Abstract
This article presents and discusses a pilot test concerning the environmental impacts assessment of organizations. The study was conducted in a production site of a world leading group in the plastic packaging industry. The purpose was to deepen the knowledge of the methodologies currently available and also of the benefits and the difficulties related to their practical implementation. The analysis was conducted in the period 2018–2019, in line with ISO 14044 and ISO/TS 14072 standards and therefore inspired by the organizational life cycle assessment (O-LCA) procedures and standards. The O-LCA test application has proved useful in detecting a number of environmental hotspots usually not detected by other life cycle based approaches, on which the organization should focus to undertake improvement actions, both internal and external (e.g., the category “employees commuting”). The experience gained in the production site under study also led to the replication of the assessment approach to other facilities around the world and for informing corporate sustainability reporting activities (e.g., Global Reporting Initiative and Carbon Disclosure Project reporting standards). Such results can provide methodological and practical insights to both scholars and practitioners in that field of activities.
Highlights
Accepted: 12 October 2021Corporate sustainability implies the adoption of technological, organizational, and managerial solutions aimed at increasing the environmental and economic and social performances of companies at various levels [1,2,3]
In order to carry out an exhaustive inventory of the data and the information required by an organizational life cycle assessment (O-LCA), multiple data collection forms were used, compiled with information and data provided by the different departments and by the various actors in the supply chain
This article presented a pilot test concerning the assessment of the environmental impact of an industrial organization
Summary
Corporate sustainability implies the adoption of technological, organizational, and managerial solutions aimed at increasing the environmental and economic and social performances of companies at various levels [1,2,3]. With the aim of highlighting the potential (and the limitations) of that methodology, this article presents and discusses the test implementation of O-LCA in a production site (consisting of two facilities located in the same area) of a world leading group in the plastic packaging industry for beauty and home, pharmaceuticals, and food and beverage products. This sector has recently been strongly concerned with identifying and reducing the environmental impacts of its productions [10,11]; for this reason, the case studied proves to be significant for its effort to extend this purpose to the entire organization. The results obtained are critically discussed, and conclusions are drawn
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