After all, what is the real impact of an organization's processes and activities on the environment? How can we develop metrics that enable this assessment? Natura and UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme, are collaborating on a project aimed at answering these questions through the validation of a new methodology, the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
This is a new environmental management tool that seeks to quantify and evaluate an organization's impacts on the environment in a more comprehensive and integrated way, considering the entire value chain of the company, with new metrics and a new data management approach.
Eight companies from around the world, with different areas of expertise, are participating in the experiment to validate the methodology, and Natura is the only organization from Latin America to join this group. Each participant defined the aspects they would like to assess in their value chain, and by July of this year, a report of the findings will be shared with UNEP members and the other organizations involved in the project.
Ines Francke, Scientific Manager of Sustainable Technologies at Natura, explains that the Organizational LCA is an evolution of another technique focused on assessing the life cycle of products and processes. “Traditional LCA analyzes only the life cycle of a product, from raw material acquisition, through manufacturing to disposal, generating a score, a unique unit of measurement that allows for comparison of products with similar functions and differentiation of impacts,” she explains. Aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions, aquatic toxicity, water consumption, land use, among others that can be part of the life cycle, are observed.
In the Organizational LCA, the idea is to evaluate the company in all its complexity. It moves beyond considering only the product, encompassing the flow of information and all processes that occur within an organization. “We want to continuously evolve our socio-environmental management model. We have already quantified and monitored our carbon footprint, solid waste inventory, water footprint, among other indicators. But with the validation of the Organizational LCA, we want to know if this tool can, in the future, support the sustainability programs that Natura has and help us manage the company's environmental data in a more complete and structured way,” summarizes Ines.
This is not the first time that Natura has partnered with UNEP. The company is part of the Life Cycle Initiative working group, a UNEP initiative aimed at promoting a life cycle perspective globally, facilitating the exchange of knowledge on the subject among more than two thousand experts worldwide. Previously, Natura contributed to the validation of another methodology proposed in the group, the Social LCA, which aimed to quantify the social impact of organizations, taking into account aspects such as health and safety, working conditions, governance, and human rights. This methodology continues to be one of the research lines of the Life Cycle Initiative.
For the validation of the Organizational LCA, Natura provided the entire scenario of the company for the year 2013. All environmental information collected and documented during that period can be adapted to the Organizational LCA model. This includes information about products, packaging, operations, transportation, and processes, among others.
With its participation, the company hopes to contribute to the evolution of environmental management tools available today in the world. “We want to provide consumers with quality products that bring beauty, pleasure, and sustainability at the same time. Therefore, it is important for us to contribute to the evolution of existing metrics alongside academia, seeking increasingly efficient management models that help us minimize our impacts as much as possible, with awareness not only of our internal processes but with an expanded view of our entire operation as a company, respecting the interdependence of business with society and nature,” concludes Ines.
