Eco efficiency and target costing for making eco-design moreeffective: integrating life cycle assessment and life cycle costmanagement

摘要

Worldwide operating chemical companies are nowadays committed tothe concept of sustainable development in addition to continuous growththat produces added value. Sustainable development (SD) demands thefulfillment of the economical, ecological and social needs of thepresent generation without restricting the development of futuregenerations. As a complement to SD the responsible care (RC) conceptcomprises a continuous improvement in the areas of environment, healthand safety. This is a new challenge for companies. Therefore they neednew tools to better describe and track their efforts and improvementswith regard to SD and RC. The eco-efficiency analysis method of BASF hasoriginally been developed to provide the company with a more soundknowledge about its own products, their competitive edge compared toother in-house products and those of competitors. The paper examines theevolution of a concept of eco-efficiency, the significance of BASFs"Eco-EfficiencyAnalysis", and the possibility to combine this withtarget costing, management accounting system that is used at the productdevelopment phase