Get to Know Dr. Jim Fava
Those of you who attended the #rethinkEPD summit will have heard from Dr Jim Fava, Chair of the Executive Committee for the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSCLI). Jim was recently awarded the Rita Schenck Lifetime Individual LCA Leadership Award by ACLCA. They’ve written up an interview with Jim, which you can read here:
Jim Fava, PhD; Executive Director (Anthesis Group); Chair of the Executive Committee – Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSLCI); Rita Schenck Lifetime Individual LCA Leadership Award
What was hard?
The hardest part of my involvement in LCA was addressing and changing the culture on how governments, businesses, consumers, and others thought about environmental protection. Unfortunately it is still hard, nor was I the only one – there were many!! At the time when we developed the LCA framework in 1990, the underlying environmental priorities were a focus on manufacturing facilities and their releases into the air, water or onto land. It was called pollution control. Governments had established and were continually setting up regulations to understanding and limit the release into the three media to levels that would not harm the environment or human health. There were also laws and regulations related to allowing the safe use of chemicals and pesticides.
In the late 1980, solid waste become more of a house hold/media focus as noted by the pictures of a barge loaded with solid waste sailing along the NJ/NY coast line looking for landfill to dispose of its solid waste load. Recognizing this, the cloth diaper industry promoted their product as better for the environment than disposal diapers (or single use) because they did not create solid waste. Thus resulting in an early ‘life cycle study’ not called LCA then, by the disposal diaper company, that showed that cloth diapers did use energy, detergent, hot water in the washing of the used diapers, not including any transportation to the pick-up services that existed. Thus the ‘diaper debate’ – what I called it – started.
It also created a climate to help to establish some alignment on a framework to complete ‘life cycle studies’. SETAC in 1990, sponsored a week long workshop, which resulted in ‘The Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessment’. Over the last 30 years there has been efforts to continue to advance the LCA methodology, data bases, and capability – all good. At the same time there were efforts by what I call ‘shaping the future’ companies (e.g., BASF, GE, etc.), governments (e.g., EU, Japan, EPA SMM, etc.), and markets (e.g., green building) to utilize the results of LCA information. But the majority of companies, governments, and markets were driven by budgets, capabilities, and governance focused on media by media policies laws and regulations. An opportunity Yes. But also very hard to change the culture, governance, priorities, and budgets to fully endorse and use LC information to inform decision making, and create business and societal values. We have made progress but much more needs to be done. A meeting among companies within the PSRT, the term ‘unfreeze the frozen middle’ became a key walk away message as a challenge to address the changes needed to accelerate the use of life cycle information and act more sustainably.
What was fun?
There has been lots of hard work but simultaneously there has been fun along the way. Since LCA addresses global supply chains and markets, LCA experts and users were located around the world. Meetings, conferences, workshops, events, & conversations occur around the world. I was able to visit wonderful places and meet many new people from around the world, who are still friends and colleagues.
For 30 years, Jane and I have been able to combine a business trip with a little sight seeing and holidays. For example, right before ACLCAXIX, we combined that trip with one to Berlin and Poland. In November, I had an opportunity to provide a key note at LCANZ and meet with some companies in NZ. After which, Jane and I spend a few weeks visiting the beautiful country of New Zealand and enjoying the culture and the people.
Work hard but also had time to visit, meet and develop new and lasting friends from around the world.
What made you proud?
That is a tough question. When I look back over my career and specially the last 30 years where LCA has played a key role, there are two time periods that make me proud of what we have accomplished in the life cycle field.
The first was the almost immediate coming together of the businesses, governments, NGOs and academic communities to converge to understand and address the LCA methodology/framework in the early 1990s. SETAC brought together professionals from NA, Europe and globally from business, governments and universities to address LCA, what is it, what are stages of LCA, data quality considerations, and code of practice. Within 3-4 years there were a number of week long workshops which results in a number of books on topics like LCA and impact assessment frameworks, data quality, and code of practice. The SETAC Code of Practice was the foundational materials for the ISO 14040 LCA standard. Those early years 1990-2000 were an excellent time for collaboration, exploring and piloting of methods, testing applications, and learning.
The second time is now. I am very proud of the LCA communities and their expression and intent to ACT. We had been talking about the gap for a while, but the professionals – acknowledge the gap and the issues, but, from my perspective, did not see the urgency and need to act now. Coming out of the ACLCA meeting, with the WHY LCA? Cards, challenged sessions and under the overall theme, Celebrating the past and Creating the future, there was an overarching interest to act. But the desire to act was not only in NA. Similar conversations in Toronto (SETAC-NA), New Zealand (LCANZ), Poland (LCM2019) and Costa Rica (CILCA2019) resulted in a desire to improve the understanding and usefulness of LC information.
For one, I am (and I know others are as well) committed to play a role to invite the LC and potential user communities to align to further create business value and help address societal issues (g., SDGs) through the increased demand for and use of life cycle information? Let’s do it!!!
What innovation, applications or another area of LCA are you most excited about?
From my perceptive there are three areas within the LCA space that I am most excited about.
- Number of practitioners who are entering the field, number of businesses and governments, number of LCA networks are expanding – in order words there is a global, large, growing and even getting larger – really exciting!!
- With the advances in software, data bases and applications to use results to inform innovation of products, materials, technologies, we are now able to reduce the time and costs necessary to complete and LCA study. For example, I attended an LCA symposium in Germany and a sustainability leader for a lighting company completed and published on their website an EPD of one of their products. That was amazing. I think that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of technology advances and the recognition of what information the decision maker needs to inform their decisions.
- The 3rd is efforts underway partially as a result ACLCA conference to understand the gap between the LC information providers and those who could use that output to inform their decision making process. After ACLCAXIX and other forums this year (e.g., CILCA2019, LCM2019, SETAC-NA 2019), I remembered talks I gave 15 years ago or so – where I discussed need to focus on both the supply of LCA information and those who should demand the use of LC information to inform decision making – supply and demand. There have been and are efforts on both. But my observations on your question about what is HARD, we still have a long way to go to bridge that gap between the supply and demand side for life cycle information.
Despite the insight and value that LCA brings, we have not hit scale among decision-makers in use of LC information. There appears to be a disconnect between the LC and user communities, e.g., Suppliers of life cycle information community do not necessarily understand the practical expectations/needs of the decision makers in order to adjust and make their LC information more relevant and understandable. Decision makers do not see and/or understand the value of life cycle information and how it can be incorporated into their decision-making processes. Obviously it is not all suppliers or decision makers.
What am I excited about!! We are willing to take giant steps to act to bridge/close this gap (‘rebranding LCA’) to create business value and help address societal issues (e.g., SDGs) through the increased demand for and use of life cycle information?