LCA as a tool for assessing product and process oriented eco-innovations undertaken by enterprises

This paper examines the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) as an approach to foster the product and process oriented eco- innovation of enterprises, using the fruit and vegetable processing plant as an example. LCA, which is traditionally used to assess the impacts of a single product system on the environment, was applied in the enterprise context. This was made possible by forming an indicator describing the environmental profile of an enterprise, which is calculated by the sum of the multiplication of the environmental impact assessment (LCIA) results for individual unit processes within a particular impact category and their weights reflecting the structure of production in an enterprise. In order to distinguish and indicate the direction in which an enterprise should undertake its eco-innovative actions (implementing eco-innovations within the product or production process) the LCIA results are presented individually for products and production processes. The research was conducted in full compliance with the LCA methodology. LCA proved that the analysed enterprise has the largest negative impacts on the environment in the following impact categories: marine eco-toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity and natural land transformation. They result primarily from the consumption of thermal and electric energy in the production processes. Therefore, to improve energy efficiency, the enterprise should take eco-innovative actions in the processes applied.