2016 Volume 12 Issue 2 Pages 54-59
Sustainability management has become an essential issue for society and for business organizations. A number of management tools to resolve sustainability issues have been developed, for example, MFCA（Material Flow Cost Accounting）and LCA（Life Cycle Assessment）. Both, MFCA and LCA, have been published as international standards within the ISO 14000 ff Environmental Management framework（ISO14051/2 and ISO14040）. Both approaches differ though considerably in scope, methodology, objective, and result. MFCA focuses mainly on material efficiency of production processes within an organization. LCA concentrates primarily on the environmental relevance of products considering the entire life cycle “from cradle to grave”. While MFCA is part of the Environmental Management Standard, in practice it has been predominantly used to improve cost efficiency. LCA on the other hand has been used to show the environmental impacts along the life cycle of a product, regarding mainly the amount of Green House Gases, not regarding economic effects. But sustainability requests the consideration of all three “bottom lines” simultaneously: the economic, the environmental, and the social. Even though MFCA and LCA differ in many respects, they are linked to each other by a common core element: material（mass）flows and their transformation. Products（regarded by LCA）are the result of transformation or production process（regarded by MFCA）. In this paper, we show some issues of MFCA as a sustainability management tool, based on the international standardizations of ISO14051 and ISO14052. When we try to integrate MFCA with LCA regarding economic, environmental, and social aspects, we first show some of the methodological differences. The possibilities to integrate MFCA and LCA are explained by the case example of a German Solid Biomass Heat and Power Co-Generation Plant, including the calculation of a corporate Carbon Foot Print. While most MFCA case examples focus on an in-company scope this case study covers a wider boundary, from forest to consumers, embracing the entire life cycle. We discuss possibilities to include economic aspects into LCA as well as putting more emphasis on environmental aspects in MFCA. And we consider the analysis of social aspects within such an integrated approach. This paper shows the possibilities to integrate MFCA and LCA in order to develop a comprehensive and efficient tool of sustainability management, for corporate efficiency and for public information purposes.
