Improvements of products by means of lifecycle assessment: high pressure cleaners

Determination of focus points in environmental design of products can be made by means of lifecycle assessment (LCA) of a reference product. This is exemplified by an LCA of a high pressure cleaner. The LCA included resource consumption, environmental impacts and working environment; all categories were weighted. It turned out that the resource consumption of copper in the motor and the environmental impact potential for ecotoxicity stemming from the detergents were the two most important impacts. Since data for working environment were only available for the manufacturing processes and the electricity production, the conclusions can only relate to these processes. In order to determine potentials for improvement, individual assessments of a range of components and simulations of changes in the product and/or its lifecycle were made. They showed that increased recycling, reduction of electricity consumption during use and improved efficiency of the use of the detergents were all very important. Several improvements have been introduced into new products on the basis of the LCA.