Sustainability analysis pillars

A useful example of sustainable design comes from BASF, and their development of the eco-efficiency tool. This tool seeks to integrate the combined aspects of each of the three pillars in an attempt to quantify the most sustainable products and illustrates some of the concerns associated with evaluating sustainable products. For example, the economic analysis includes a total cost of ownership that goes beyond the purchase price of a product to incorporate the cost of operation, the cost of environmental health and safety, and the cost of labour. Thus, even though a product may have a lower purchase price, it may be more expensive to use and thus costlier over the total life cycle of the product. 

Since both retrofit actions can be considered together, the decision maker can opt to perform a Level II economic analysis, since it is required for the botdeneck of scale and it fits the raw material consumption bottleneck analysis. For the environmental and social pillars, the Level I will be conducted, since it is enough for a sustained assessment of both retrofit designs. 

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