Eco efficiency and target costing for making eco-design more effective: integrating life cycle assessment and life cycle cost management

Worldwide operating chemical companies are nowadays committed to the concept of sustainable development in addition to continuous growth that produces added value. Sustainable development (SD) demands the fulfillment of the economical, ecological and social needs of the present generation without restricting the development of future generations. As a complement to SD the responsible care (RC) concept comprises a continuous improvement in the areas of environment, health and safety. This is a new challenge for companies. Therefore they need new tools to better describe and track their efforts and improvements with regard to SD and RC. The eco-efficiency analysis method of BASF has originally been developed to provide the company with a more sound knowledge about its own products, their competitive edge compared to other in-house products and those of competitors. The paper examines the evolution of a concept of eco-efficiency, the significance of BASFs "Eco-EfficiencyAnalysis", and the possibility to combine this with target costing, management accounting system that is used at the product development phase