Briggs and Stratton Unveils Its First Life Cycle Assessment Apr 4, 2012

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Briggs & Stratton unveiled its first detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and is making it available on its corporate web site. The report is at:
www.basco.com/sustainability.

The LCA process was broken into three steps:

Understanding Impacts: "Very little quantitative information in the Outdoor Power Equipment industry existed before conducting the assessment. While there was an intuitive understanding that the use phase of a mower likely held the largest impact, it was unknown how much other life cycle phases, such as raw materials extraction and processing, product manufacturing, transportation, and end-of-life recycling/disposal, contributed to the whole," said Jennifer Misiewicz, Environmental Manager at Briggs & Stratton, who led the LCA process.

Identify Improvement Opportunities: The LCA process enabled the company to better identify opportunities for improvement of its processes, designs, and use of engines and other products. In the future the company will evaluate the environmental impacts from new products being developed using LCA as a tool.

Engage Consumers: "We feel that transparency, leadership and value are key elements that our retail customers and consumers look for when they make decisions about our products," Misiewicz said. The company is using the LCA results to work with retail customers and consumers to drive a sustainability-minded decision making process.

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