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The Assessment of Environmental Performance as a Basis
for Sustainable Development Practices and Policies.
Professor Roland Clift
Centre for Environmental Strategy
University of Surrey
Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH
How can you tell whether a new technology is really "green"?
An approach to assessing the true environmental performance
is the tool known as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA
is embedded in European policy as the basis of Integrated
Product Policy (IPP) and some Member States use it as
the basis for Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control
(IPPC). LCA can also be extended to show the balance between
environmental impact and economic and social benefit.
Whereas LCA is now commonly applied to assessing technologies
and products, its application to policies is not established.
However, using the approach to assess the effectiveness
of environmental policies can be enlightening. An example
of current concern is the EU Directives on "take-back"
of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and
End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV).
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