A New Zealand Perspective On Life Cycle Management

When?

Thursday 14 January 2010, 13:00

Where?

45B AZ 04

Open to:

Staff, Students, Public

Speaker:

Sarah McLaren, Associate Professor and Director, Life Cycle Management Centre, Massey University

There is an increasing expectation that products should have sustainability credentials, and that these can be
verified. In particular, there is increasing pressure for information on the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of products throughout their life cycles.
The New Zealand government and producers have responded in a variety of ways to these demands. In this presentation, I will describe the history and context for development of the new initiatives, and describe three in more detail. One is the New Zealand GHG Footprint Strategy for the Land-Based Primary Sector: it seeks to ensure that New Zealand producers can proactively position themselves to respond to the increasing demand for carbon footprint information, and that New Zealand can be influential in the development of fair and practical international standards for carbon footprinting of food products. It also seeks to advocate for collaboration across markets to ensure consistent and fair approaches are taken across products, producers and countries on carbon footprinting issues. 

Another is the Life Cycle Management Project run by Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute. This project is working with six manufacturing companies to integrate life cycle thinking into their operations, management systems and strategic planning. A third initiative is the new Life Cycle Management Centre at Massey University, supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry through establishing a Chair in Life Cycle Management. The new Centre will build capability in New Zealand to support producers in differentiating their products in export markets based on environmental credentials.

A PDF of the presentation is available: