The heightened awareness of the importance of environmental protection together with the possible impacts associated with products manufactured and consumed, has increased the interest in the development of methods to better comprehend and reduce these impacts. From this first exercise it became obvious that these LCAs are most reliable if they can be supported by manufacturers of the corresponding ingredients rather than by its users. Zeolites are a well defined class of crystalline aluminosilicate mineral. They occur naturally but also more than 150 types have been synthesised. In the seventies Zeolite A was developed as a detergent builder.
Builders are ingredients which perform a number of functions in laundry detergents.
The most important one is to soften the wash water by complexing the calcium and magnesium ions. This material is now well established as a builder component in the US, Europe and Japan. This comprises the flow of energy and raw materials, emissions to air and water and solid waste generation. The aim was to trace back all production processes to the extraction of raw materials from earth and to calculate average data for the production processes of Zeolite A employed in Europe. A further objective was to achieve and promote positive collaborations between the individual companies and zeolite manufacturer.