The chemical industry, with its wide range of organic and inorganic primary materials and preliminary products, is a central branch of global structure and relevance. The products of the chemical industry are present in the manufacture of almost all final products. Innovative thinking encourages chemical products to be optimised in their production (e.g. catalysts or synthetic compounds of low density and high stability) and subsequently reduce the ecological impact of the final product.

Factors affecting the environmental impacts of the chemical industry:

• The integration level of the installation. The more a plant utilizes waste heat or by-products from adjacent processes, the more efficient it is and the lower the energy demand it has. Also, products that are processed onsite prevent the need for transportation.

• Large installations often show little variety in their raw material and en-ergy input streams, despite their wide spectrum of products, sometimes reaching several thousand. Consequently, they tend to be extremely complex and interconnected.

• To identify ecologically relevant information, this complexity must be allowed for, and where appropriate, broken down. This is also true for the ever-increasing, internal energy recovery and conversion installations.

• The chemical industry faces the most varied range of environmental re-quirements due to the branch specific demands of its clients (e.g. the ordinance on vehicles destined for scrap and WEEE). Innovative products, whose ecological performances are quantified in their development stages, or at least before they are brought onto the market, are now being called for.

• The chemical industry?s customers are increasingly demanding quantitative insights on the ecological performance of the product they purchase (Green Procurement, responsible care, EoL-Initiatives) so that they can subsequently optimise their own final products.

An ecological-economic-technical evaluation, from a life cycle approach, provides an effective opportunity to meet this challenge. Chemical products can be manufactured in an environmentally-friendly way themselves, subsequently having a positive influence the environmental performance of other products, for instance, by making them lighter or easier to recycle.