Forbo Flooring: GaBi i-report pushes product development and process improvements

“PE’s Life Cycle Assessment software is the base for our green development and evaluating our environmental impacts with our focus on reducing the CO2 emissions and the related irreversible climate change caused by global warming.”

Forbo Flooring, one of the world’s leading flooring system manufacturers, has long been committed to improving environmental performance and has commissioned many peer reviewed LCA and benchmark studies. Forbo recently decided to form an internal LCA team to take on the role of building knowledge in house and allowing more individuals, within the organisation, to get involved with the LCA process.

Fred Seifert states: “GaBi software will enable us to further drive down the environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle of our products and processes by providing us with the information that we need to identify areas for improvement. The GaBi i-report in particular will allow us to push product development and innovation based on environmental performance information.”

CO2 - the new currency

1.2 tons of carbon dioxide have been caused by Andreas Große Habuer, Tobias Bayer and Joachim Zepelin through their research for the story „CO2- the new currency“, published in the november edition of the business magazine Capital. PE INTERNATIONAL calculated a carbon footprint of about 1.2 tons as the result of every journey, telephone call and piece of paper, which the journalists needed for their research.

Among others, they communicated with Deutsche Post, one of our SoFi software customers. „Years ago, as we were experimenting with carbon- accounting, we were even sneered“, says Michael Lohmeier, CO2 manager of Deutsche Post. Nowadays, nobody laughs. „Because of the extensive system of numbers we now exactly know how to save CO2 and therefore money“.

The big problem in accounting CO2 is, that Deutsche Post is just able to detect and have an effect on 20 percent of their emissions. The big rest arises from the suppliers, who have to make up the balance for the emission of CO2 for themselves to enable Deutsche Post to provide significant data. „We just started to ask our business partners for their emissions of CO2“, says Lohmeier.

Factoring primary products and supply chains which provoke emissions of CO2 into the own accounting of C02 gains immensely in importance. In the future, the huge trading company Wal-Mart claims C02 data of its 100.000 suppliers, for instance. Therefore, selecting a supplier will become a question of C02 emissions.

„Now, questionnaires are sent back and forth around the world“, says Michael Spielmann, Coordinator Carbon Management at PE INTERNATIONAL. „It will not take much longer and  the smallest companies will have to expose their C02 emissions“, mentions Spielmann. „Soon each company will be affected by the topic of C02 – in effect, carbon dioxide is developing itself into a currency. The sooner companies adapt themselves to it, the better“.

read the full article (german)

LaserNetworks – one of the TOP 10 Green Solution Providers

The Canadian Dealer News has selected LaserNetworks as one of the TOP 10 Green Solution Providers. In the last years the company has taken numerous measures internally around power consumption and alternative energy use, packaging, recycling and natural or diesel gas vehicle use. Company’s president, Brian Stevenson, say that although many new printers consume less energy during operation, there is a significant carbon footprint in their manufacture.

That’s why LaserNetworks provides its customers with the ability to use highly-reliable and more environmentally-friendly Reflexion toner cartridges, which Stevenson notes were found in an independent study by PE INTERNATIONAL to provide greater than 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, acidification emissions and global warming emissions when compared to fully recycled OEM cartridges.

The research was conducted using the 4345 cartridge, a model representative of the entire Reflexion product range. The environmental information sheet (according to Environmental Product Declaration ISO 14025) by PE INTERNATIONAL analyzed the environmental impact of the complete life cycle of a remanufactured Reflexion cartridge in comparison to similar products and examined the four distinct operational factors that impact the environment: manufacturing or remanufacturing, packaging, logistics, and end of life.

Climate negotiations in Poland

Climate negotiators are gathered for December 1 to December 12 talks in the western city of Poznan, at The United Nations Climate Change Conference to push for a agreement on a new climate treaty by next December in Copenhagen to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

Some delegates, negotiators and analysts attending the UN talks in Poznan have suggested that the financial crisis coupled with a change in US administration will require a scaling back in ambition for Copenhagen, such as agreement on a set of principles rather than a treaty.

read more

Tesco enhances climate profile

Tesco had announced that it will take on the challenge of operating a low carbon business. This corporate target has been made clear by Sir Terry Leahy – Tesco’s CEO. Tesco’s goal is to reduce the carbon emissions of the company by 50% by 2020. To achieve this ambitious goal carbon footprint reduction must be incorporate in all business processes including the design of the stores. By setting up an agreed set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be used by all interior design managers, the base for comparing different products has been established.