All’inizio di settembre si è tenuto in Olanda, tra Utrecht e Amersfoort, il meeting del SimaPro Partner Network, la rete mondiale di esperti LCA di cui facciamo parte. Ogni incontro è caratterizzato da novità, aggiornamenti, approfondimenti, ma quello di quest’anno è stato pura ispirazione, sia dal punto di vista professionale che personale.
Ogni incontro è una conferma che la sostenibilità fa parte del nostro DNA, e infatti alcuni partner hanno fatto scelte di vita non proprio comuni e conducono esistenze entusiasmanti che varrebbero diversi racconti a parte. Dal punto di vista professionale, in questo incontro vi è stato un ricchissimo scambio di esperienze e competenze, con idee per nuove collaborazioni e progetti che sono stati abbozzati.
Da un paio d’anni fa parte della nostra rete anche Life Cycle Indonesia, fondata da Jessica Hanafi, che abbiamo incontrato per la prima volta proprio in Olanda. Jessica ci piace molto, sia come donna che come imprenditrice. Curiosi di conoscerla meglio e di far conoscere la realtà della LCA nel suo paese, le abbiamo chiesto di rispondere ad alcune domande.
Jessica Hanafi is the founder of Life Cycle Indonesia, whose mission is to provide products and services to support industries in achieving sustainable practices.
Jessica received her Ph.D in Manufacturing Engineering and Management, specializing in Life Cycle Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia in 2008. She has been working on the area of life cycle engineering and life cycle assessment since 2003 and continued her passion in research on sustainability issues when she joined Universitas Pelita Harapan in 2010 as a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Engineering. Her research area has been in electronic waste management, reverse logistics, collection strategies, life cycle assessment, sustainable manufacturing and sustainable supply chain management.
Life Cycle Indonesia, similarly to 2B, is a member of the PRé Global Partner Network and a great team to work with.
Jessica has kindly agreed to answer our questions and give us an overview of LCA in Indonesia.
Can you tell us something about your experience with LCA and what drove your passion for this methodology?
When I was teaching in the University, my aim was to introduce LCA to the students and my colleagues through classroom teaching and research. I think the passion is more on how it is a great methodology that opens our perspective on things in life, not merely for product development. You see that you are a tiny dot in this entire universe and what you do is not always the most important thing in the world. Many other people are more important than you. As industry, we tend to concentrate more on what we do, trying to “perfect” what we do but then missed out because it turns out the impact is not within the manufacturing phase, but in another phase.
I always see a Life Cycle Assessment analogously to a medical check-up for products and services. After the check-up you see which areas in your body are in the red zone and you need to change your lifestyle and improve it. Similarly goes with LCA.
Can you give us an overview of the LCA world in Indonesia and the major sustainability trends at the moment?
LCA is still growing in Indonesia. The “practitioners” are mostly still from the academics. We have the Indonesian Life Cycle Assessment Network (ILCAN) that consists of academics and other people who are interested in LCA. However, very few businesses are going this way. Sustainability is something they are trying to grasp. Even with many Sustainability Reporters in Indonesia, some may still miss the real concept of sustainable development.
You are very active in the agricultural sector; what are the major challenges and goals of the agricultural holdings you work with?
I am actually quite new in agricultural sector. My background is more on system process engineering (chemical engineering) and manufacturing system. However, since in Indonesia people are mostly interested on doing LCA in agricultural sector, I am exposed to many of the experts in this area and learn more each day.
I suppose the major challenges is a classic LCA challenge: DATA availability. Especially in the agricultural sectors, many cross boundaries between environment and technosphere are difficult to measure precisely. Another one is of course having proper practice in sustainability and for some who have done a proper practice is to make sure that they can stay transparent and traceable.
You are a member of the Board of the Indonesian Life Cycle Assessment Network (ILCAN), please tell us more about the projects initiated by the Network and your role within the organization.
The main mission of the network is to provide capacity building, share knowledge and promote LCA in Indonesia. We also aim to establish network within and outside the country in relation to LCA, specifically, and sustainability, in general. We work closely with the National Centre of Environment and Forestry Standardization in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. We also worked on some topics related to Sustainable Consumption and Production.
ILCAN has 4 main activities:
- Biennial conferences (ILCAN Conference Series on Life Cycle Assessment/ICSoLCA). The next one will be around November 2018 in Jakarta (We will circulate the updates soon).
- Trainings on LCA (ILCAN Training Series on Life Cycle Assessment/ ITSoLCA). We will be having our 4th Batch in upcoming October. Currently the training is still on Introduction to LCA and Tool. The tool that we practice in the training is SimaPro and we have the 1-day hands-on tutorial of the tool. Life Cycle Indonesia is actually the organizing partner for the trainings.
- Journal (Indonesian Journal on Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainability / IJoLCAS) is our bi-annual journal. You are also welcome to submit your articles to our journal. It is not limited only on the case of Indonesia. The journal is open access and is published in English.
- We also have Bi-annual Newsletter published every January and July, reporting news around Indonesia and the world related to LCA.
My title role is External Affairs. So, my main job is to introduce ILCAN to as many people as possible, spread our wings, be updated to the LCA news in the world and to get to know you more as well. I also organize the trainings and I am responsible for the newsletter.
What are your future projects?
Our future project is the Indonesian Life Cycle Inventory Database. We have been working on the concept and everything for a while now but unfortunately up until now we are still looking for people and department to do it. When it is voluntary, it is difficult to get the ball roll. This has become my personal challenge as well.
Thanks Jessica!