Life Cycle Assessment

Questionnaire

Please fill in this questionnaire. This will help us to understand your needs. Which requirements do you as an SME have ? How would SMEs like to implement LCA in daily practice?
Please respond as soon as you can. Every feedback counts.

Company Information

Sector

Bio-based plastics
Industrial Machines

Electronics
Renewable energy

Sensors
Smart textiles

Business model

B2B B2C Product manufacturer Design consultancy Logistic or service provider

Is your job position and responsibility in the company connected with environmental protection?

Yes. Please specify. No. Please specify:

Who is responsible for environmental assessment in your company?

Environmental engineer
Product developer
Product manager

What is the most environmentally problematic life cycle phase of your product according to your assumptions / previous assessments / etc.?

Raw material use
Manufacturing
Distribution
Use
Disposal
I don't know yet.

What is the most important environmental aspect according to your assumptions / previous assessments / etc.?

Energy consumption
Water consumption/effluents
Raw material consumption
Hazardous substances
Recycled content
Long distances for transportation
Waste treatment
Greenhouse gas emissions
I don't know yet.

General Questions

Which of the following statements do you relate to Life Cycle Assessment?

Measuring environmental impacts
Comparing the life cycle phases of the product
Measuring the Global Warming Potential
Measuring energy consumption
Measuring the emissions to air, water and land
Measuring the smog
Measuring the Ozone Layer depletion
Optimizing the production process
Improving product quality
Improving environmental performance of the product
Reducing costs
Avoiding hazardous substances
Increasing product durability
Resource conservation
Fulfilling environmental legislations
Achieving sustainable future
Achieving competitive advantage
Fulfilling social responsibility
Implementing Ecodesign

Which of the following approaches are you familiar with in your company?

Cleaner Production
Environmental Management System (ISO 14000 / EMAS)
Sustainable Product Development
Ecodesign Aspects
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Cradle-2-Cradle
Legal compliance schemes (RoHS, REACH, WEEE)
Environmental Risk Assessment
Eco-efficiency
Quality management Systems (ISO 9000)
None of the above

Which one of the following statements is true for your company?

We ran LCA according to ISO 14040 once
We run LCA according to ISO 14040 regularly
We haven't run LCA according to ISO 14040 yet
We ran other tools.
I have never worked with LCA at my company before

Which tools did you use? / About which tools you are aware of?

Use	Aware
		MET matrix
		Ecodesign Checklists
		10 Golden Rules
		LIDS-Wheel
		Ecodesign PILOT
		SimaPro
		GaBi
		Umberto
		Eco-Indicator 99
		KEPI (Key Environmental Performance Indicators)
		TESPI (Tool for Environmental Sound Product Innovation)
		EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme)
		None of the above

How was your experience with environmental assessment tools?

It was time intensive
It was cost intensive
It was easy to implement/adapt our internal database
It was easy to access an external database
It was difficult to find suitable databases for our product/sector
It was easy to integrate the tools into our own product development process
The results were comprehensive and easy to interpret
I have no experience

The application of the tool(s) was …

very easy. easy. difficult. very difficult.

If you have no experience of undertaking an environmental assesment, what is the main reason for this?

No free resources in the company
No easy-to-use tools to perform the environmental assessment
Our products have not yet run through a complete life cycle (i.e. missing data)
Legislation is too complicated

Please provide any general comments about your previous environmental assessment experiences.

From a product perspective: What are/will·be your main drivers to undertake an environmental assessment?

Present	Future Drivers
		Environmental legislations, EU regulations
		Eco-label requirements
		Reducing the manufacturing costs
		Improving product quality
		Environmental improvement of the product
		None of the above

From a company perspective: What are your main drivers to undertake an environmental assessment?

Environmental Concerns
Environmental legislations, EU regulations
Own initiative for competitive advantage
Internal preparation for future requests
Marketing
Environmental communication
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Suppliers' demand
Customers' demand
None of the above

Which of the following could help you to promote your products?

Energy saving
Reducing product carbon footprint
Productivity increase for the user of your product
Increasing product lifetime
Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)
Declaration according to an existing standard / public scheme
Declaration according to customer requirements
Development of a standard / verification scheme needed to ensure harmonized declarations
Internal assessment for the development of more eco-friendly products
Eco-benchmarking with other products from your sector (Benchmarking criteria with energy efficiency, carbon footprint, content of bio-based material, etc.)

Which of the following requirements fit mostly to your sector?

Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
Energy using Products (EuP) / Energy related Products (ErP)
Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)
Nordic Swan
Blauer Engel (Blue Angel)
EU Flower
End of Life Vehicles (ELV)
Energy Labelling Directive (ELD)

What do you expect to get as the result(s) of the environmental assessment?

Carbon Footprint
Global Warming Potential
Energy Efficiency Index
Impact category results
Eco-profile
Elaborated analysis
LCA according to ISO
Recycling rates
None of the above

Communication Section

What kind of environmental data (in the broadest sense) is or has been requested by your customers and other stakeholders?

Energy efficiency / consumption / generation
Material declarations
Life Cycle Assessment data
Product Carbon Footprint data
Corporate Carbon Footprint data
Recyclability assessment
Total-Cost-of-Ownership

Legal compliance data / declaration
Referring to which legislation:

Which of the aforementioned requests (from the previous question) are currently hard to answer?

Energy efficiency / consumption / generation
Material declarations
Life Cycle Assessment data
Product Carbon Footprint data
Corporate Carbon Footprint data
Recyclability assessment
Total-Cost-of-Ownership

Legal compliance data / declaration
Referring to which legislation:

Which environmental communication tools does your company use today? /
Which environmental communication tools are your company planning to use in the future?

Now	In Future
		Environmental Report
		Sustainability / CSR Report
		Eco-Labelling (Blauer Engel, Nordic Swan, etc.)
		Self-declared environmental claims
		Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)
		Energy Efficiency Label (EU - Energy label)
		LCA results
		Carbon Footprint
		Carbon Footprint PAS 2050
		Carbon Footprint GHG Protocol
		Hazardous materials
		Recycling rates
		Material Inventory List
		None of the above

Do you have internal environmental communication channels between your product development department and your environmental assessment department?

No Yes. If yes, please explain briefly:

Software Expectations

What are your expectations from an environmental assessment tool?

downloadable application / stand-alone software
online tool
plug-in for existing management/controlling software
plug-in for expert software (e.g. Cambridge Engineering Selector)

What are your expectations from a web-based environmental assessment tool?

Import and/or export data
Audit trail to track changes to certain parts of the tool
Statement of the EC Regulations binding in the field
Constitute an environmental certificate for your product
Other (Please fill in the following field)

Please describe what you need this software to do:

Further Information

Would you be interested in being updated in the LCA2Go project status and/or applying the tool we develop in the future?

Survey results	General project information	Project involvement	Possibility for clarification
Free training using the LCA2go tool

In any of this cases we would need your contact information.

Name:		& Email:

If you have some additional remarks please let us know.

I am only a tester of this Survey Application.
Please don't incorporate this input. It's fake data.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey.

Your contribution is valuable and greatly appreciated.