A Resource Efficiency Approach to the Management of Natural Capital
Abstract
Integrating Resource Efficiency in Business Strategies: A Mixed-Method Approach for Environmental Life Cycle Assessment in the Single-Serve Coffee Value Chain
Businesses are under increasing pressure to improve the resource efficiency of their products and services. There is a need for practical tools that enable businesses to implement resource efficiency in their value chains. In this paper, a mixed-method approach for assessing the life-cycle-wide use of natural resources in products and services is applied in a case study on a coffee value chain of the company Mars, Incorporated. Material inputs along the entire chain were assessed quantitatively using the Material Input Per unit of Service method, while a semi-quantitative Hot Spot Analysis was performed to identify environmental hot spots. This mixed-method approach has been implemented for the first time in practice to assess the value-chain-wide resource consumption and environmental impacts within a specific value chain of Mars, Incorporated. The paper concludes that combining the methods provides better insights into the value chain than using just one of either of the methods alone. For the company, the approach has proven to be practicable because it identifies improvement options and their value-chain-wide resource efficiency potential.
Authors
Justus von Geibler, Wuppertal Institut
Francesco Cordaro, Chief Scientist, Catalyst, Mars, Incorporated
Katharina Kennedy, Wuppertal Institut
Michael Lettenmeier, Wuppertal Institut, D-mat Ltd.
Bruno Roche, Mars Chief Economist and Catalyst Managing Director
About This Paper
Originally published in Journal of Cleaner Production, 115 (2016), 62-74. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.12.052. Published online by The Wuppertal Institute. View publication page.
Authors’ Note
This is the authors’ version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as editing, corrections and structural formatting, may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in the Journal cited above.
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