The Unit III Course Project is a continuation of the assignment that began in Unit II. The first portion of the course project involved a life cycle analysis (LCA). This second portion is a pollution prevention (P2) audit. The third portion, which will be due in Unit V, will focus on corporate philosophy related to P2. 

P2 Audit

The Unit III Course Project requirement is to use the same product you chose in Unit II to explain the aspects of a P2 audit. In addition to summarizing the three phases of the audit (planning, assessment, and analysis), ensure you have covered any steps you would take specific to the product you have researched. You must utilize information in the course textbook and at least one peer-reviewed article from the CSU Online Library. In your paper, limit the amount of direct quotations. The vast majority of your paper should contain paraphrased information from your sources and should include your own thoughts on the P2 audit.Since the course project is cumulative, please include the LCA from your Unit II submission in a section titled “Life Cycle Assessment,“ which should have an APA Level 1 heading (centered, bold). The LCA section should be followed by the new section titled “Pollution Prevention Audit,” which should also be formatted as an APA Level 1 heading.This portion of your project should be at least two pages in length, which is in addition to the two-page LCA submitted in Unit II. Please make changes in your LCA section per your professor’s Unit II feedback. A title page and references page must be included; however, these pages will not count toward meeting the minimum page requirement. Adhere to APA Style when constructing this assignment, including in-text citations and references for all sources that are used. Please note that no abstract is needed. 

Running Head: LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS 1

LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS 2

Semi- Autonomous Vehicles

Student Name

Tutor’s Name

Date

Life cycle appraisal is examining the production, obliteration, and removal of an item, ‘from support to grave.’ It is a method of dissecting an item as though it carried on with a day to day existence. You can take a gander at this evaluation in a progression of steps.

Stage 1-Extraction (Sperm Meets Egg): You start by falling to pieces the item into its segment parts and investigate where they came from (Filimonau, 2019). Each item on Earth is made by the Earth somehow or another, and extricated from mining or developed by agribusiness.

Stage 2-Processing into helpful parts (Fetus filling in the belly): Once these base segments, for example, aluminum or wood are removed, they are taken some place, generally an industrial facility, to be prepared into valuable parts. Lumber is cut into 2×4’s, aluminum is softened down and fitted into pipes etc.

Stage 3-Product Formation (Birth): From the spot of handling, these base materials that are currently in helpful shapes and estimated are brought to somewhere else to be gathered into a genuine item. This could be basically bits of wood made into a work area, or it very well may be many little bits of metals and plastics shaped into a PC.

Stage 4-Product Life (Adult life): Now the end result is bundled and conveyed some place, either a store to be purchased or straightforwardly to a client or business. Here it experiences its valuable life, which could be a half year or could be 50 years, contingent upon the product.

Stage 5-Product Disposal (Death) – The product has arrived at the end of its helpful life, and should be discarded by one way or another. There are numerous approaches to do this contingent upon the product. It very well may be given to good cause to be stripped for parts, it could go to a landfill to spoil, and it very well may be reused into crude materials for another item (O’Neill, 2017). Everything relies upon what it is. This evaluation can be utilized for a wide range of parts of item investigation like the ecological effects, carbon footprints, expenses of creation, and best practices for removal. Life cycle evaluations are regularly viewed as while investigating a product for maintainability.

Electric Car Life Cycle Assessment

Introduction: Semi- autonomous vehicles are a genuine illustration of a product going through the introduction period of its life cycle (Klöpffer & Grahl, 2019). While self-driven vehicles are not (yet) available to be purchased, these vehicles that all around accessible for the more inquisitive early-adopters. The cost of these vehicles is still high, as there isn’t a lot of rivalry.

Growth: Electric vehicles as of now have a huge portion of the general vehicles’ market. There is now some opposition occurring, the quantity of electric charging focuses is developing and this innovation is improving (particularly with regards to the scope of the vehicle) and ending up being more biological than the petroleum product controlled vehicles.

Maturity: Conventional vehicles brands with models that keep going for quite a while – like the ‘Center’ model for Ford are a genuine illustration of an item crossing this life cycle period. Its cost isn’t high (contrasting and different brands in a similar explicit market) and it figured out how to arrive at its greatest market entrance because of consistent overhauls and vehicle upgrades.

Decline: The sales of diesel-controlled vehicles are falling, for the most part because of environmental worries from governments that are setting cutoff times for diesel vehicles to be prohibited from certain urban areas and nations. They are losing piece of the pie to other substitute items like electric vehicles and they will gradually arrive at the end of their life cycle.

Reference

O’Neill, T. J. (2017). Life cycle assessment and environmental impact of polymeric products. iSmithers Rapra Publishing.

Klöpffer, W., & Grahl, B. (2019). Life cycle assessment (LCA): A guide to best practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Filimonau, V. (2018). Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle analysis in tourism: A critical review of applications and implications. Springer.

MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 1

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Explain pollution prevention audits.
3.1 Summarize the three phases of a pollution prevention audit.
3.2 Discuss steps taken on a pollution prevention audit of a particular product of choice.

Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes

Learning Activity

3.1

Chapter 18
Unit III Course Project

3.2
Unit Lesson
Chapter 18
Unit III Course Project

Chapter 18: Pollution Prevention Opportunity Assessment

Unit Lesson

Introduction

We are moving right along. In Unit I, we learned about the pollution prevention (P2) hierarchy. In Unit II, we
learned about life cycle analysis. In Unit III, we will learn about P2 audits.

P2 audits are also known as P2 opportunity assessments (Dupont et al., 2017). However, whatever phrase is
used, the idea is to analyze a situation to find ways to produce less waste and reduce costs while having at
least as good a result. The situation can involve running a production line at a factory, an office space with
workers at desks using computers, a household, an entire worldwide corporation, or a small farm or a
multinational agribusiness; the list is endless. The use of P2 audits is wide-ranging. However, P2 audits are
most common for analyzing an industrial production process. This lesson will discuss the reasons for a P2
audit and how to conduct one.

P2 Audit Purpose

P2 audits formally came into being as a result of the 1990 U.S. Pollution Prevention Act (PPA). The act aimed
to bring together many of the seminal environmental laws passed since 1970—primarily the Clean Water Act
(CWA), Clean Air Act (CAA), Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act (RCRA). While still on the books and still key to U.S. environmental protection, the laws focused on
treatment.

The U.S. Congress desired a way to encourage companies to look at the beginning of their production lines in
order to reduce having to treat or dispose of waste at the end. The PPA introduced the P2 hierarchy as shown
below, which was introduced in Unit I. The government aimed to improve the environment by encouraging
companies to focus first on P2 (source reduction/chemical substitution) and then on reuse, recycling,
treatment, and disposal (in that order). Note that disposal is the least desirable item in the hierarchy.

UNIT III STUDY GUIDE

Pollution Prevention Audits

MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title

Lawmakers wished to establish legislation to encourage regulators to work with companies to help them
improve the environment—by acting in accordance with the P2 hierarchy—while at the same time reducing
corporate costs—by using fewer or more environmentally friendly raw materials and reducing treatment and
disposal costs.

P2 Audit Tasks and Initiation

The P2 audit has three phases: planning, assessment, and analysis. A fourth phase, implementation, could
also be included. However, it is not a part of the actual facility audit; it is management’s response to the audit.
We will discuss the components below.

P2 audits are nearly always initiated by upper management (Dupont et al., 2017). Managers determine why
they want to have a P2 audit. Most often, they have been in contact with upper-level management at other
companies and with regulators; those parties have then relayed the cost-saving capabilities and waste
reduction aspects that can result from a P2 audit. The managers may also have had conversations with their
staff regarding P2 audits. Staff with experience in P2 audits, waste management, and regulatory impacts may
have an influence on management’s decision to go forward with a P2 audit.

P2 hierarchy
(Adapted from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], n.d.)

MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Planning is the first phase of the P2 audit. Management has approved the go-ahead for the audit. Either an
outside auditor (or team) is hired or in-house staff will conduct the audit. Review the graphic below to see
some of the typical steps in the assessment phase.

The audit team could include leaders from various departments in the facility as well as floor workers in order
to add a different perspective. Upper management has probably laid out the audit objectives, but probably
only broadly, such as reducing costs and waste. The P2 audit team will identify ways to achieve those goals
(e.g., by focusing on source reduction, process improvements, and chemical and materials substitution).

For a production facility, a list of the unit operations used to produce the end product must be drawn up. This
could include material and chemicals entering the facility, material preparation, product production, waste
collection, and product and waste exiting the facility. Depending on the size of the facility and type of
production, there could easily be 10 or 100 or more unit processes. While the plant operations are being
delineated, documentation about permits and plant inputs and outputs can be assembled. This will give the
team an idea of the waste generation, air emissions, and water emissions, as well as quantities of raw
materials entering the facility and products leaving the facility.

The last item in the planning phase is to gather the team, possibly around a conference table, and conduct a
mock walkthrough of the facility. Since all aspects of the facility are most likely represented by one staff
member each, this will involve input from all members of the team. The leader can begin the walkthrough by
saying, “Our first process is where materials enter our plant. Mary, you are in charge of receivables. Please
describe this process for us.” Then, the audit leader would have the next person in the process describe the
next process and so on.

People around the table should understand the plant’s flow and be thinking of where to look for
improvements. The staff presenting their particular areas may not have a big-picture view of how to improve
their areas and may be reluctant to change methods. However, the audit leader needs to make it clear that
they are looking to make positive changes in the facility; their goal is not to make anyone look bad. The audit
team must have a supportive mindset with no one getting overly defensive if someone suggests changes to
another’s area of the facility.

Now that the P2 team is assembled, the primary work begins. The P2 team must physically walk through the
plant. This should happen over an extended period of time; it does not need to be a 1-day or 1-week
endeavor. The team can split up and cover different areas. It is helpful if different team members visit the
same areas at different times. The idea is to keep an eye out for hose discharges, air leaks, liquid leaks,
storage tanks, or areas that seem to be in constant need of cleaning and wiping.

The team members will not be experts at the majority of the plant areas they visit. This allows them to see the
big-picture functionality of the plant. Plant personnel will likely be ready to answer questions from the P2
team. They will know their job very well. They may even mention things that they have noticed for years and
suggested fixes, but the item never got fixed. They may be glad to see a friendly audit team that may finally
make some positive changes. However, plant personnel may also be wary that management is looking to
downsize some positions, so they may be hesitant to say anything critical of the status quo.

MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

During the assessment phase, the items shown below are important.

Task Considerations

Always stay focused on the
P2 hierarchy.

Are there ways to reduce waste by treatment?
Even better, can there be reduced treatment and increased recycling?
Even better than that, can there be reduced recycling and increased reuse?

Task Considerations

Identify raw material,
chemical, water, energy, and
other inputs to the facility.

Are the quantities and items in accord with Phase I discussions?
Are there any obvious ways to substitute less harmful chemicals or reduce
any inputs?

Task Considerations

Identify current efforts at
recycling.

These may be laudable efforts, and the staff may be proud of the amount of
recycling. However, while applauding their recycling, try to ask if there are
ways to reduce more waste rather than recycling it.

After completion of the Phase II assessment, the P2 team assembles its data. This phase could take the
longest amount of time. For all suggested changes, costs need to be estimated.

For instance, if new, more efficient equipment is suggested, capital and operating costs need to be
determined as well as the cost to dismantle and dispose of old equipment. Since this is a P2 audit, there may
be a concern about waste. Are there cost-effective ways to reuse or recycle old equipment? Can it be sold to
another company? Do personnel need to be trained to use the new equipment? Do process changes require
additional or fewer personnel?

If environmentally friendly chemical substitutions are suggested, the cost of the new chemicals must be
determined. Are there long-term contracts with the old chemical supplier that are costly to terminate? Do
process changes need to occur in order to use the substitute chemicals?

Reduction or elimination of waste is generally a positive outcome of a P2 audit. However, the company may
be tied to long-term disposal contracts. If there are costs to prematurely end any contracts, those costs should
be included in the audit.

The final step in the analysis phase is to write a report showing all of the findings. It would be helpful to have
sections of the report include the components shown below.

The cost, timeframe, and overall ease/difficulty of making each change in each section should be indicated.

The report will be presented to upper management. Even though management initiated the P2 audit, you may
be surprised at their reluctance to go ahead with what may seem like obvious changes. You may not know
their motivations. There could be political or familial connections with suppliers or waste disposal companies.
Maybe they have an aversion to increasing or reducing personnel. On the other hand, maybe they are looking
forward to having the next annual report to show shareholders the positive environmental improvements they
are making with a reduction in long-term costs. It is important that the team be prepared to respond to
management’s positive and negative comments.

MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Conclusion

This lesson has presented the purpose and conduction of a P2 audit. The idea is to use the P2 hierarchy as a
guide for the audit. Depending on the scope of the audit, the audit could take a month or a year. Having an
audit is usually a decision made by upper management. However, the scope is determined in consultation
with outside P2 experts or in-house experts. Once the scope is determined, the team members are
assembled.

In Phase I of the P2 audit, the team plans the audit and lists the unit processes in the plant to make sure the
entire team is familiar with more than just their area of plant expertise. The Phase II assessment involves one
or more plant walkthroughs. All team members are involved in this phase and note material and process
changes that would be helpful. Phase III is the analysis of all of the data. Costs are determined for all
proposed changes.

Finally, the audit is presented to upper management. At this point, be prepared for questions. However, as the
leader, knowledge and familiarity of the audit team lends to a position to defend and advance the suggestions
in the audit—knowing that the quality of the audit conducted under leadership, if implemented, will result in
cost savings and environmental benefits for the company.

References

Dupont, R. R., Ganesan., K. & Theodore, L. (2017). Pollution prevention: Sustainability, industrial ecology,
and green engineering (2nd ed.). CRC Press.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Pollution prevention (P2). https://www.epa.gov/p2

In order to access the following resource, click the link below.

To learn more information about pollution prevention laws and policies, review the web page below.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Summary of the Pollution Prevention Act.

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-pollution-prevention-act

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-pollution-prevention-act

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III
Required Unit Resources
Unit Lesson
Introduction
P2 Audit Purpose
P2 Audit Tasks and Initiation
Conclusion
References
Suggested Unit Resources