In the transition towards a non-polluting, resource efficient industry, greater consideration of value chains shows potential to deliver greater overall environmental benefit than less integrated approaches that focus on individual stages, such as installation or sectoral emissions. Actions taken at the design and manufacturing, or other product life phases, can influence environmental impacts at other stages such as material processing, and waste recycling. The overall life-cycle impacts need to be accounted for at the outset.
This report assesses how value chain approaches are/should be incorporated in BAT determinations and related environmental regulatory and policy concepts to accelerate progress toward identifying practices that more effectively consider an industry’s entire value chain to reduce overall environmental impacts as well as individual manufacturing sites within a given sector.
