Integrated Product Policy and distributed supplier structures: SME and sound LCA data in conflict

The sustainable development of our societies is one of the priorities of the European Commission. Through its new Integrated Product Policy (IPP), the European Commission is developing a series of measures that influence the supply and demand of environmentally sound products. Some IPP tools are based on product and process self-declarations, while others require the performance of a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) data availability is the fundamental premise in order to be able to perform an LCA. In this paper, the work is to investigate the diffusion of required LCA data along the supplier chain with the aim of identifying strategies to increase the awareness of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in respect to LCA, to suggest methodologies to facilitate the collection of sound LCI data and to test available low-cost software tools to support LCA, with particular reference to the production phase is reported