What does a small junk removal company in Ottawa and the Mexican central bank have in common?
Setting the right system boundaries
As we move along with doing the ol-cah pol-cah at Junk That Funk, our discussions with the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative have focused on the first draft of our Goal and Scope document.
The highlight of the feedback so far has been about our definition of system boundaries – that is deciding which energy and material processing activities to include in our study. Specifically, we were to review the UNEP Guidance document examples provided in section 3.3.1 Activities Involved. Below are the resulting changes to our diagrams system boundaries, before and after reviewing section 3.3.1.
Before:
After:
As you can see, the changes to our system boundary diagram mainly include filling in more detail and classifying the transportation of materials as an activity of our processing facility.
To guide these changes, we created a survey for each of our facilities from the lists of predefined activities in section 3.3.1 of the UNEP guidance document. For instance, in the process of completing this survey, it became clear that we should include our truck and trailer activities as “Transportation of materials, intermediate products, products and waste in vehicles owned or controlled by the reporting organization”, which is a direct activity of a controlled facility.
Since we found the survey really simplified our discussions of what to include within our system boundaries, we have included it below and recommend using it to structure your system boundaries. If you decide to complete a system boundary survey of your organization’s controlled facilities, feel free to send it to us for 50$ off your next junk removal booking.
Thank you to all the clients we’ve seen over the last few months, who have been very supportive and interested in our participation in the UNEP Guidance on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment road test. Please show your support with bookings for junk removal pick-ups.
