Critical Reviews of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Carbon/Water Footprints and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)

 

Your organisation may have already commissioned or completed Life Cycle Assessments, Carbon/Water Footprints and/or Environmental Product Declarations. These studies may only be communicated externally after they have been subjected to a critical review performed by an independent third party. Verification* also provides the following advantages:

  • Quality assurance of the study and results through the involvement of an independent expert;
  • "A fresh and unbiased pair of expert eyes" can help to increase the comprehensibility and transparency of the LCA study;
  • Suggestions for the identification of environmental improvement potentials;
  • Ensuring conformity with applicable standards (e.g. ISO 14040, ISO 14044, EN 15804, etc.);
  • Enhanced reliability and credibility during communication with external stakeholders;
  • Knowledge capacity building through supervision by an independent specialist.

I can offer:

  • profound practical experience in carrying out LCAs and Carbon Footprints;
  • long-standing experience in leading a diverse range of critical reviews in an international expert organisation (DEKRA);
  • approved verifier for EPDs both for the German scheme for Building and Construction products (IBU) as well as for the International EPD System.

A critical review can either be provided directly through Schulz Sustainability Consulting or via DEKRA. In either case I provide a detailed review report including a verification statement, which can be used for external marketing and communication initiatives. Where the review is carried out via DEKRA, a verification statement with the DEKRA logo will be issued. 

In case of comparative LCAs, a review panel consisting of at least three interested parties will have to be installed according to prevailing standards. I support with recruiting experienced experts, management and execution of the review panel.

The critical review process can be carried out in one of two ways: 

  1. the critical review is provided after the final LCA report is completed ("review a posteriori"); or
  2. the critical review accompanies the LCA study from the onset of the project ("concurrent review").

In my experience the concurrent review provides advantages due to the verifier being involved early on in the process and during critical LCA project decision-making. Lengthy corrections at the end of the project can thus be avoided. A detailed discussion of these two options can be found here.

 

*Often the terms "critical review" and "verification" are used synonymously. I follow this convention although I refer to the differences as outlined here.