Pollution Accounting and Environmental Indicators: Revisiting the Issue

摘要

Quantification of emissions within a manufacturing process is not an easy task. This is partly due to the many inconsistencies arising from measurement and reporting of emission or waste data. Such inconsistencies do not arise from a lack of data on the amounts of raw material used by a facility or a lack of knowledge of the location of the main emission or waste points. The problem is the way boundaries are drawn around the emission points when defining a source for quantifying emission. This is especially important in the context of pollution prevention, especially source reduction. It is also important if those data are to be used for building emission inventories and for conducting impact analyses. This paper will discuss a methodology that was used for generating accurate and specific facility emission data and environmental indicators and will overview some steps that may be needed to validate emission indicators. Facility emission (or waste) indicators derived using the approach overviewed here may be used to derive more reliable emission factors for inventory purposes and for validating pollution prevention claims.