Weighing the Anchor - Drivers for Environmental Performance

Current and Future Trends

Four major trends are highlighted to help companies understand that the changing external framework increasingly turns out to be a driver for Life Cycle Management. The changes may have different impacts on different companies, but in the end they are relevant for all of them. This is first and foremost true for SMEs as the weakest parts in the value chain.

The trainer's job is firstly to illustrate and explain the trends and to show that they can be utilised to allocate benefits to proactive companies. For this reason the trainer should try to encourage SMEs to notice the trends not as threats but as opportunities. The early recognition of and adequate reaction to a changing external environment offers the opportunity of a competitive advantage. To work towards the following, an exercise dealing with stakeholder demands has been placed at the end of the presentation.

Do you get a Smile from your Stakeholders?

For the same reasons and just like in the previous session's exercise, this exercise is equivalent to one of the steps, this time the second step of "The Life Cycle Management Navigator".

TIPS for the trainer!

• Demonstrate with local examples that the trends are relevant for all companies.
• Demonstrate that trends are drivers for Life Cycle Management.
• Make sure to work out the importance of good stakeholder relationships for companies.
• The number of slides provided in this presentation is rather extensive for the time scheduled. Trainers should therefore customize the presentation to the target audience. If your target audience is just starting in the area of Life Cycle Management, we suggest cutting out the rather advanced trends, like "Extended Producer Responsibility" (slides 36-38). Otherwise spare them too many details on rather obvious issues, such as "increasing regulation" (slide 33) and "costs for waste" (slides 14, 15).