Environmental Product Declarations for Complex Electronical Equipment

In industry, consumers increasingly require detailed environmental information about the amount of waste, CO2-emissions and the consumption of water and energy for the whole life-cycle. Against this background, elaborate Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) of type III according to DIN ISO 14025 and basing on a complete life-cycle analysis for the product analysis according to ISO 14040/14044 are more and more frequently drawn up for this target group. The most important of the gained findings are aggregated to form an environmental product declaration (EPD) for the customer. The EPD has to be verified by an independent expert. In order to find solutions for existing methodical and scientific problems, Siemens AG and the University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden have been working together on several joint projects on this subject for the last two years. The results were first drafts of Environmental Product Declarations. The first step was the selection of suitable products. Most important criteria was the representiveness. On the one hand the chosen products should be produced in large quantities; on the other hand the results should be transferred as easily as possible to other comparable products. First of all as complete as possible life-cycle analyses had to be created. For that purpose, the professional software tool GaBi 4 was put to use. A very important aspect for the application-oriented utilization is the modeling. Within the scope of the different projects three different ap-proaches for parametrized models have been tested, each one featuring specific advantages and disadvantages. Due to variable boundary conditions, the data results always show certain inex-actnes. Image: Fotolia