Environmental management tools and their application : a review with references to case studies

Abstract. This paper is an attempt to classify environmental impact reduction efforts, present different methodologies for environmental performanc improvements in an appropriate framework, and see these in combination with Systems Engineering principles. The main goal of the present work is to apply Systems Engineering methodology in order to evaluate and improve environmental life cycle performances in industrial systems. The paper also presents case studies from the furniture industry and the shipbuilding and shipping industry in Norway. These case studies exemplify and demonstrate the methods in use, and show how companies move from one level of environmental performance to a higher level through the work with environmental related problems. The conclusion is that by using Systems Engineering, appropriate tools, or parts of them, may be taken into use while needed. Finally, Systems Engineering i s introduced as a method for Industrial Ecology.