Assessment Method for Integrating Material Risk into Green Productivity

• Main Authors: Sung, Hsiao-Chi, 宋曉琪
• Other Authors: 胡憲倫
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/he67wf

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 環境規劃與管理研究所 === 96 === Asian productivity organization (APO) coined the concept of Green Productivity (GP) in 1994; it demands enterprises to save resources and energy, reduce pollution, and recovery/recycle wastes during the course of the production and sale processes in order to look after both productivity and improvement of environmental performance. Some scholars have proposed the concept green productivity index (GPI), and it is the ratio of productivity to its environmental impact. It can be considered as a measurement tool of green productivity for comparing similar products. Since every product may have hidden risk within its life cycle, however, current GPI only considers environment impact and cost, which limits its utilization. Every product may have hidden risk within its life cycle; however, current GPI only considers environment impact and cost, which limits its utilization. Risk assessment provides a procedure for systematically estimating human health and risk potential. It is applicable for evaluating risks of each chemical used during its life cycle stages, from production, use, recycle and treatment. It is important for enterprises to adopt risk assessment for their products. Hence, this study tries to incorporate risk assessment component into GP assessment. Two additional indicators other than GPI were developed; they are green risk indicator (GRI) and productivity risk indicator (PRI). Then, a chemical company which produced styrene in Korea was used as a case study and three alternatives (the alternative 1, 2,and 3 are: replacing the current suppliers with the supplier who produces SM with the lowest life cycle impact, a new agitation process with baffle equipment which mixes the reactants more uniformly and minimizes the dead volume in the mixing tank, and application of alternatives 1 and 2 together, respectively) were used to verify the applicability of the method developed in this study. Based on the calculation of the three indicators (GPI, GRI, PRI) and a product portfolio analysis, the results show alternative 3 is the best process to fulfill the all three criteria, namely environmental, economical and risk performance. It is believed that the method developed in this study should be able to help enterprises to increase profitability, and to protect the environment as well as to prevent the damage from the risks.