Choosing cleaner and safer production practices through a multi-criteria approach

Through the international (Convention) and European (Industrial Emissions Directive) legislations, industries have to apply preventive measures according to the Best Available Technique (BAT) concept or cleaner production (CP) strategies. Many technical solutions exist to conform, but the major stake is to assess the overall effect or impact of the implementation of a technique on the installation. Several methods have been developed based on LCA or carbon balance methodologies, but they lack the technical, economical and social criteria, which are aspects that should be taken into account when choosing cleaner and safer production practices. This paper presents a decision-making tool based on a multi-criteria analysis approach, likely to encourage manufacturers to implement cleaner and safer production practices in the metal finishing sector. First, a systemic analysis of the industrial facility and its environment is used to identify 15 criteria structured in a hierarchical pattern. These criteria represent the targets which could potentially impacted by a cleaner and safer production practice: for example, water, soil, air, but also the environment of the workstation of an operator, the production processes, etc. Using these 15 criteria, users can then assess up to 86 practices selected in particular in the BREF report dealing with Metal Finishing. Thus, this tool enables the practices the most adapted to a particular company to be chosen not only on financial criteria, but also on a social, environmental and technical view.