Life cycle assessment and ecodesign for Bodenschatz

Increasing product sustainability demands

The Swiss company Bodenschatz stands for "intelligence in the bathroom" and high-quality bathroom accessories. The aim of the project with Milani was to reduce the environmental impact over the entire life cycle for two classic products in the bathroom range. In doing so, Bodenschatz wanted to address new sustainability requirements on the part of its B2B customers. In the construction industry in particular, the EN 15804 standard requires manufacturers to publish so-called Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), which provide information about the ecological footprint of products. At the same time, Bodenschatz sought to contribute to a more sustainable economy and address increasing demands by both customers and product users for more sustainable products.

Pragmatic life cycle assessment of two bathroom products

Milani created the first-ever LCA for Bodenschatz, modeling the environmental footprint for two successful products in their bathroom porfolio. For this purpose, Milani used a simplified version of a full LCA, a so-called screening LCA. This pragmatic and quick approach allowed to identify the components and activities having the greatest environmental impact. Milani visualized the data in an understandable and implementation-oriented way so that the results could be understood and used by various stakeholders in the company.

Using the screening LCAs, Milani could reveal that a single material was responsible for nearly two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, Milani's calculations laid the foundation for future EPDs.

Data-based scenarios of ecodesign potentials with up to 84% greenhouse gas reduction

Based on the findings of the LCA, Milani went on to show how ecodesign strategies can be used to reduce the environmental impact of products and created three different scenarios for this purpose. Among other things, the design, the choice of materials and the business model were analyzed. With these scenarios, Milani derived appropriate measures that would result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of up to 84%.

The results of this ecodesign process has increased the internal knowledge at Bodenschatz of the current situation. In addition, they have impacted the design of future product lines and allowed to fulfill the information obligation by Bodenschatz towards its customers.