Multi-Criteria LCA Framework for Sustainable Hydropower Refurbishment Design

Application of life cycle thinking towards sustainable cities: A review

The purpose of this paper is to determine indices of environmental, economic and social sustainability related to the Italian production of ceramic tiles in porcelain stoneware in order to contribute to the construction of a reference benchmarking useful to decision makers, designers and end users of ceramic tiles. To achieve this goal, this paper is based on the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework that incorporates the three dimensions of sustainability with cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) tools. The study has shown that in the production of porcelain stoneware one of the major environmental problems, in addition to production in the strict sense, is the distribution system of the product to end users and, to a lesser extent but always significant, the process of supplying raw materials. Finally, it was highlighted that the joint use of the three impact assessment tools (LCA, LCC, S-LCA) requires further methodological work to avoid the risk of double counting of sustainability performance. This research has adopted a detailed methodological approach, both in the collection and in the processing of data, keeping the main phases of the production process separate. In this way, it has been possible to highlight that the major environmental criticalities are just beyond the “gate” of the ceramic factories, along the logistics chain. The study also proposes for the Italian ceramic sector not only indicators of environmental sustainability but also economic and social.

The building industry accounts for about 40% of all climate impacts, stemming from construction and renovation processes, use of buildings and demolition, disposal and recycling of buildings and building materials. The Danish Parliament passed a Danish Climate Act in 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030, and an action plan in 2021 to create a Circular Economy (CE) in DK that can support the achievement of climate neutrality by 2050. About 20% of the Danish housing stock is affordable housing with approx. 560.000 affordable housing homes, inhabited by nearly 1 million out of 5.8 million people. In 2020 the Danish Government decided on the most significant overall housing agreement to set aside EUR 5,5 billion for ‘Green renovations’ and the building of new affordable housing. Building and renovating affordable housing in Denmark can thus become significant drivers for the Danish building industry’s transition to CE. Therefore, developing integrated tools and methodologies for life cycle thinking and CE assessment for the built environment is necessary. We have identified four significant gaps in this endeavour in a previously released literature review: For CE to succeed, it is necessary to take a circular view of the life cycle of buildings, which includes the service life phase, the reuse phase and the recycle phase; To achieve CE, it is necessary to continue research regarding the possibilities of integrating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) into Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA); S-LCA needs further maturation and development; It is imperative to focus upon operationalising LCSA for practitioners in all phases of a building’s life cycle. This paper aims to outline a strategy for analysing and discussing these four gaps and their interrelation in-depth and suggest an action research proposal to understand better how to bridge the gaps from a research perspective.

Population growth and urbanization lead to increasing water demand, putting significant pressure on natural water sources. The rising amounts of domestic wastewater (WW) in urban areas may be treated to serve as an alternative water source that may alleviate this pressure. This study examines sustainability of utilizing reclaimed domestic wastewater in urban households for toilet flushing and garden irrigation. It models a city characterized by water scarcity, using a coal-based electricity mix. Four approaches were compared: (0) Business-as-usual (BAU) alternative, where the central WW treatment plant effluent is discharged to nature; (1) central WW treatment and urban reuse of the effluent produced; (2) semi-distributed greywater treatment and reuse, at cluster scale; (3) Distributed greywater treatment and reuse, at building scale. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), social LCA (S-LCA), and life cycle costing (LCC) were applied to the system model of the above scenarios, with seawater desalination as the source for potable water. System boundaries include water supply, WW collection, and treatment facilities. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology, was integrated into the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework as a means for weighting sustainability criteria through judgment elicitation from a panel of 20 experts. Environmentally and socially, the two distributed alternatives perform better in most impact categories. Socially, semi-distributed (cluster scale) reuse is somewhat advantageous over the fully distributed alternative (building scale), due to the benefits of community engagement. Economically, the cluster-level scenario is the most preferable, while the building-scale scenario is the least preferable. A hierarchical representation of the problem’s criteria was constructed, according to the principals of AHP. Each criterion was weighted and those of extreme low importance were eliminated, while maintaining the integrity of the experts’ judgments. Weighted and aggregated sustainability scores revealed that cluster level reclamation, under modeled conditions, is the most sustainable option and the BAU scenario is the least sustainable. The other two alternatives, centralized and fully distributed reclamation, obtained similar intermediate scores. Distributed urban water reuse was found to be more sustainable than current practice. Different alternative solutions are advantageous in different ways, but overall, the reclamation and reuse of greywater at the cluster level seems to be the best option among the three reuse options examined in this assessment. AHP proved an effective method for aggregating the multiple sustainability criteria. The hierarchical view maintains transparency of all local weights while leading to the final weight vector.

The methodology that integrates the three sustainability pillars, from a life cycle perspective, is called Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). LCSA provides the highest level of assessment among the existing tools, as it allows a holistic understanding of the sustainability of products and processes, which translates into better support for decision-makers. In this work, LCSA was carried out considering the combined application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), to evaluate and compare the environmental, social and economic impacts of lattice joist precast slabs based on three scenarios: (I) conventional concrete, (II) slabs produced from concrete with the addition of tire rubber residue, (III) slabs produced from concrete with the addition of tire rubber residue and rice hulk ash (RHA). The SimaPro software and the Ecoinvent database were used to conduct the analyses, in addition to prices from local construction materials suppliers and official public data on Brazilian society. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods used were ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint Hierarquist v.1.01, in the environmental pillar; material acquisition, transportation and energy costs in the economic pillar; Reference Scale Approach focused on the category Workers in the social pillar. It was possible to conclude that Scenario I was the most adequate alternative, even though it did not have alternative materials in its composition. The replacement of tire rubber waste by sand in Scenarios II and III proved to be disadvantageous from the point of view of sustainability, even with the slight improvement by also replacing part of the cement with RHA in Scenario III.&nbsp

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) are currently essential tools for evaluating the sustainability of products and industrial systems. Although LCA is systematically applied today and is considered a stable methodology, supported by material-specific guidelines and rich databases, S-LCA remains immature in certain aspects. In the presented case study, LCA was applied to compare 11 methanol synthesis processes, all based on reverse Water-Gas Shift, but characterized by different sources of CO2 and H2 supply, to identify the most promising. Accordingly, the model was then integrated with that of propylene production (methanol to propylene-MtP), identified as a molecule of interest for the current and future market. Then, the authors propose an innovative approach to enhance the application of S-LCA in the industrial chemistry sector. The climate change impact of the different methanol production scenarios varies significantly: the most impactful is the methanol synthesis via coal gasification (2.76 kg CO2 eq), and the most promising are via CO2 generated by wood chips waste or dedicated biomass by employing hydrogen produce with wind electrolysis, which show the negative impacts of -0.40 kg CO2 eq thanks to cogeneration and the use of hydrogen from renewable sources. On the social level, the database shows a preference for productions occurring in Europe, across all the categories analyzed. The proposal of a sector-specific guideline represents a step forward that could facilitate the future application of the methodology. Moreover, the integration of LCA and S-LCA proves effective in delivering a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the issues addressed, offering valuable insights for stakeholders. The LCA should be applied to assess the environmental sustainability of alternative production routes in chemical processes, while the complexity of S-LCA can be mitigated by initiating preliminary assessments.

Application challenges for the social Life Cycle Assessment of fertilizers within life cycle sustainability assessment

Roughly since 2004, there has been an ever increasing interest in developing and using social life cycle assessment (SLCA). A quick overview of the SLCA publications indexed by SCOPUS shows a small but stable increase from 2004 (Fig. 1). With regard to scientific publications, the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment has been the leading journal covering this field with around 85 % of the above publications, to a large extent probably due to the very early explicit interest from the journal and the announcement of a dedicated subject editor, David Hunkeler, whose role was later taken over by Tom Swarr. Thanks to these persons, the authors who have contributed and the timely interest from the journal, it seems that a new field of research has been established which is growing year by year—a development I will do my best to sustain during my time as subject editor on the SLCA area on the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. Despite this activity, it seems fair to state, as it has been so many times before, that SLCA is still in its infancy. But the ‘infant’ is now close to a decade, so how come it has not matured more? My claim is that SLCAwill continue to be considered in its infancy until it has more profoundly ‘proven to work’. But what does it mean that the SLCAworks? I would guess that for many a solid ‘proof’ would depend on at least two aspects: First of all that the methodology actually does ‘what it is supposed to do’ and secondly, that what SLCA does has to be unique or at least that the SLCA has to ‘do what it is supposed to do’ better than other comparable tools. If SLCA does not do what it is supposed to do, then at least the motivation for developing it needs to be reconsidered, and if what SLCA does is not unique in some way, there seems to be little point in developing a new tool for doing the same as some other tool is already doing. But what is SLCA supposed to do? From a first glance, it seems that SLCA is to deliver decision support relating to the social impacts of products (or services, systems or technologies—here termed products), to be used either for comparing products or identifying hotspots (Benoit and Mazijn 2009). In this regard, it may seem that SLCA already delivers. For example, case studies have already been conducted relating to, e.g. cut roses (Franze and Ciroth 2011), tomatoes (Evans et al. 2009) or laptop computers (Ekener-Petersen and Finnveden 2012). These studies do, indeed, provide an assessment of social impact of products which could be used for decision support. The question is, however, what decisions the decision support provided through SLCA is to support? The only obvious answer seems to be decisions leading to more beneficial social conditions throughout the product life cycles. If the use of SLCA in decision making does not lead to an improvement of these social impacts, then it seems as a rather pointless affair to develop, carry out and consider the SLCA result in a decision context. Thus, SLCA is to deliver decision support which improves the social impacts in the product life cycles when considered in a decision context. However, this idea of developing decision support in improving social conditions is far from new. Take, for Int J Life Cycle Assess (2013) 18:296–299 DOI 10.1007/s11367-012-0517-5

This article offers a critical sociological-philosophical-communicological review of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method in the context of the food industry. While LCA has been established as a standardized tool for quantifying environmental impacts, this study analyses it not merely as a technical method but as an epistemological construct that actively shapes societal understanding of sustainability. Drawing on the theory of social construction of reality, situated knowledge, and critical theory, the article explores how methodological choices within LCA (e.g., system boundary definition and indicator selection) are not neutral but reflect specific social and political priorities. The findings reveal that standardized LCA approaches often lead to epistemological reductionism by homogenizing complex ecological processes and neglecting local contexts and environmental justice issues. Furthermore, the article examines the instrumentalization of LCA in sustainability communication and green marketing, where quantitative data are frequently used to legitimize existing business models rather than to drive systemic change. The discussion emphasizes the need to transcend instrumental rationality and shift toward transdisciplinary and deliberative approaches. The article advocates for integrating Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and broader Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) frameworks to address sustainability challenges in the food industry more holistically, incorporating social justice and cultural sensitivity. Keywords: life cycle assessment (LCA); social construction of reality; situated knowledge; sustainability environmental communication; epistemology of ethics; sociology of responsibility.

Access, affordability and sustainability of raw material supply chains are crucial to the sustainable development of the European Union (EU) for both society and economy. The study investigates whether and how the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methodology can support responsible sourcing of raw materials in Europe. The potential of social indicators already available in an S-LCA database is tested for the development of new metrics to monitor social risks in raw material industries at EU policy level. The Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment (PSILCA) database was identified as a data and indicators source to assess social risks in raw material industries in EU-28 and extra-EU countries. Six raw material country sectors in the scope of the European policy on raw materials were identified and aggregated among those available in PSILCA. The selection of indicators for the assessment was based on the RACER (Relevance, Acceptance, Credibility, Ease, Robustness) analysis, leading to the proposal of 9 social impact categories. An S-LCA of the selected raw material industries was, thus, performed for the EU-28 region, followed by a contribution analysis to detect direct and indirect impacts and investigate related supply chains. Finally, the social performance of raw material sectors in EU-28 was compared with that of six extra-EU countries. Considering the overall social risks in raw material industries, “Corruption”, “Fair salary”, “Health and safety” and “Freedom of association and collective bargaining” emerged as the most significant categories both in EU and extra-EU. EU-28 shows an above-average performance where the only exception is represented by the mining and quarrying sector. An investigation of the most contributing processes to social impact categories for EU-28 led to the identification of important risks originating in the supply chain and in extra-EU areas. Therefore, the S-LCA methodology confirmed the potential of a life cycle perspective to detect burdens shifting and trade-offs. However, only a limited view on the sectoral social performance could be obtained from the research due to a lack of social data. The S-LCA methodology and indicators appear appropriate to perform an initial social sustainability screening, thus enabling the identification of hotspots in raw material supply chains and the prioritization of areas of action in EU policies. Further methodological developments in the S-LCA field are necessary to make the approach proposed in the paper fully adequate to support EU policies on raw materials.

This study proposes a systematic approach for identifying the relevant social issues of a sector or company to be integrated within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework. The approach is implemented through the Pugh matrix analysis in a wine company located in Abruzzo, Italy. The Pugh matrix is suitably modelled for social organizational life cycle assessment by considering the subcategories, i.e. social issues, and the stakeholder categories proposed by the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment UNEP/SETAC. The model is implemented by involving 31 consumers, 28 workers, 36 local community, and 7 value chain actors who were interviewed and asked to give a score by comparing pairwise the subcategories of each stakeholder, respectively. The results allowed the identification of the most relevant subcategories for the case under study. For example, the health and safety issue is evident as being relevant for different stakeholders (i.e. worker, local community and consumers). Furthermore, starting from the relevant subcategories, a set of indicators was identified. The indicators are allocated at two levels depending on the kind of data used for assessing the indicators (sites visit, consultation of reports or surveys and questionnaires). This study proposes and implements a model within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework as well as Social Life Cycle Assessment in order to support decision-makers in sustainability decisions, taking into account the entire value chain over time.

Purpose This paper concerns an integrated life cycle assessment (ILCA) comparing daylighting retrofit solutions for an existing sports hall, currently relying only on electric lighting. Daylight quality, environmental impact and financial aspects are generally independently considered, leading to suboptimal decisions when all aspects are considered together. By taking the sports hall as an example, the article demonstrates how an ILCA can support the decision-making process. Design/methodology/approach The actual space is investigated via field measurements. These are utilized for calibrating simulation models. Daylight and circadian lighting simulations are carried out in Climate Studio and Alfa software. The simulations inform the final design for three potential daylighting retrofit solutions based on tubular daylight devices, skylights and windows. The solutions are analyzed and weighted based on daylight and circadian lighting outcomes, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost (LCC), and, finally, from an ILCA perspective. Findings No daylighting renovation outperformed other solutions in terms of quality, environmental and financial aspects. All renovations proved more profitable than no action. ILCA demonstrated the importance of balancing and optimizing all criteria together. The study highlights the need to incorporate daylighting design early and use ILCA approaches for informed, profitable renovation decisions. Originality/value While studies have been conducted to evaluate either the lighting quality or the environmental impact of daylighting retrofits, little has been done considering both aspects together, including also a financial perspective. There is a strong need for a more interdisciplinary approach to guide informed and optimal retrofit decisions.

Life cycle assessment in support of sustainable transportation

Eco-efficiency for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation of municipal solid waste management: A case study of Tianjin, China

Summary Industrial ecology (IE) and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) are increasingly important in research, regulation, and corporate practice. However, the assessment of the social pillar is still at a developmental stage, because social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is fragmented and lacks a foundation on empirical experience. A critical reason is the absence of general standardized indicators that clearly reflect and measure businesses’ social impact along product life cycles and supply chains. Therefore, we systematically review trends, coherences, inconsistencies, and gaps in research on SLCA indicators across industry sectors. Overall, we find that researchers address a broad variety of sectors, but only few sectors receive sufficient empirical attention to draw reasonable conclusions while the field is additionally still largely an a‐theoretical one. Furthermore, researchers overlook important social core issues as they concentrate heavily on worker‐ and health‐related indicators. Therefore, we synthetize the most important indicators used in research as a step toward standardization (including critical challenges in applying these indicators and recommendations for their future development), highlight important trends and gaps (e.g., the focus on worker‐ and health‐related indicators and the a‐theoretical nature of the SLCA literature), and emphasize critical shortcomings in the SLCA field organized along the key phases of design, implementation, and evolution through which performance measurement approaches such as SLCA typically progress in their development and maturation. With this, we contribute to the maturation and establishment of the social pillar of LCSA and IE.