Society’s Perception-Based Characterization Factors for Mismanaged Polymers at End of Life

Feeding a growing, increasingly affluent population while limiting environmental pressures of food production is a central challenge for society. Understanding the location and magnitude of food production is key to addressing this challenge because pressures vary substantially across food production types. Applying data and models from life cycle assessment with the methodologies for mapping cumulative environmental impacts of human activities (hereafter cumulative impact mapping) provides a powerful approach to spatially map the cumulative environmental pressure of food production in a way that is consistent and comprehensive across food types. However, these methodologies have yet to be combined. By synthesizing life cycle assessment and cumulative impact mapping methodologies, we provide guidance for comprehensively and cumulatively mapping the environmental pressures (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, spatial occupancy, and freshwater use) associated with food production systems. This spatial approach enables quantification of current and potential future environmental pressures, which is needed for decision makers to create more sustainable food policies and practices.

Improving the production chain with LCA and eco-design: application to cosmetic packaging

Although there was a demand for environmental health data on chemicals, there was no global scientific organization able to talk about the science behind the regulations being developed. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) was founded in 1979. SETAC has three strengths: its global scale, its tripartite membership and governance, and its scientific base. Because SETAC was developed on an international scale, it has been able to address global environmental issues.The SETAC North American LCA Advisory Group is a formally recognized group within SETAC that has been in existence since June 1991. Similarly, SETAC Europe established an LCA Steering Committee. Both the LCA Advisory and Steering Committee are referred to as the SETAC LCA Groups.The LCA Groups report to the Board of Directors of both SETAC and SETAC Europe. Specific activities such as workshops, conferences, or educational material development, including ‘position papers’, are approved by the Board of Directors. During the 1990s these SETAC LCA Groups were instrumental in driving the scientific progress to codify the professional practice of LCA. During this time period, several major workshops were successfully organized and over a dozen key publications produced. The SETAC LCA Groups also broadly supported the initial preparation of the ISO 14040 series of voluntary international standards as well as their subsequent revisions.The general mission of the SETAC LCA Groups is to proactively advance the science and application of LCAs to reduce the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with products, packaging, processes or activities.Although life cycle assessment promised to be a valuable tool in evaluating the environmental consequences of a product, process, or activity, the concept was relatively new and required a framework for further development.The workshop, ‘A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments’, held August 18–23, 1990, at Smugglers Notch, Vermont, was organized by SETAC to develop a framework and consensus on the current state of LCA and research needs for conducting life cycle assessments. Although life cycle assessments have been used, in one form or another, before the name was coined, this workshop report is the first document which presented the name of the method.The four SETAC LCA workshops in Smugglers Notch (1990), Leiden (1991), Sandestin (1992) and Wintergreen (1992) formed a tiered process to culminate in the Code of Practice workshop of Sesimbra, Portugal, March 31–April 3, 1993.Developing international consensus on harmonized methods has been a goal of the SETAC LCA workshops. The ‘Code of Practice’ completed the harmonization process. Shortly after the workshop, during the autumn of 1993, the ISO standardization process was initiated.In 1994, as a result of the SETAC LCA workshops, the LCA Advisory Group of SETAC and the LCA Steering Committee of SETAC Europe established individual work groups to address specific LCA issues.SETAC’s working groups and workshops have advanced both the application and reputation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by authoring LCA publications, supporting the development of LCA standardization, partnering with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and advancing the use of LCA in various sectors. As SETAC grows and expands on its own and with its supporters and partners, it will continue to advance the understanding and use of LCA while ensuring that science is kept at the forefront of LCA development.KeywordsGlobal coordinating group (GCG)International organization for standardization (ISO)LCA in developing countriesLCA in the building sectorLife cycle assessment (LCA)Pellston workshopsSETAC Europe LCA steering committeeSETAC LCA groupsSETAC North American LCA advisory groupUNEP/SETAC Life cycle initiativeWork groups life cycle impact assessmentWork groups simplified/Streamlined LCAWorkshop LeidenWorkshop SandestinWorkshop SesimbraWorkshop Smugglers NotchWorkshop Wintergreen

Context The European Commission (EC) recognised Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as "the best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products". It also identified "the need to improve data availability and quality worldwide by internationally cooperating on LCA data and methods". The life cycle approach is also part of the 2011 Communication on "A resource-efficient Europe – Flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy". To support these life cycle based EU policies, the EC has started the "European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPCLA)"[1]services (e.g. consulting or research services), tools (e.g. LCA tools, ecodesign tools), databases (e.g. LCI databases) and the corresponding developers and providers. in 2005. This Platform is implemented and coordinated by the EC Directorate-General Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Environment and Sustainability, in close collaboration with DG Environment. The Platform works on the basis of coherent and quality-assured life cycle data, methods, and studies. The LCA Resource Directory is one of the deliverables of the Platform. This application has been running since 2006 and it contains lists of Novelty The LCA Resource Directory has recently been further developed so that it can contain and organize LCA case studies and metadata on these studies. The new LCA Resource Directory will be launched during the Fall 2011. Methods The new functionalities of the LCA Resource Directory allow users (LCA expert and non-expert) to browse a database of LCA studies. Thanks to the searching tool, a user can sort the information available as metadata and identify relevant LCA studies according to his/her interests. Many of the fields of the template used to characterize LCA studies are based on the ISO 1404x series. Some fields of the template are mandatory (e.g. functional unit and system boundary) in order to assure that the information showed in the application fulfills most of the requirements of the ISO 14044 for reports to be disclosed to the public. Other fields of the template include: "Intended application(s)", "LCIA impact categories" and "Compliance". The LCA study has to be uploaded on the Directory. Moreover, a final verification step is performed by the web application administrator to ensure quality and consistency. The application is open worldwide (http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/directory.vm). Any research group, company, university, etc. is now able, after registration, to upload studies and give metadata on them using a template. DG JRC will be in charge of the maintenance of the application and will populate the Directory with the first set of studies during the Fall 2011. An open call to relevant research groups and institutions will be send in order to populate the Directory with registered users and studies. Conclusions With these new capabilities of the Resource Directory, the EPLCA makes progress in its aim of promoting life cycle thinking when making available to all kind of LCA practitioners a good quality database of LCA studies, together with a searching tool. [1] http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Perkembangan industri di Indonesia yang pesat memberikan dampak positif terhadap perekonomian, tetapi juga berdampak negatif pada lingkungan akibat kurangnya perhatian pengelolaan limbah dari kegiatan produksi. Untuk mengurangi dampak buruk tersebut, penerapan konsep produksi bersih menjadi sangat penting. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) merupakan pendekatan untuk mengevaluasi dan mengukur dampak lingkungan secara menyeluruh dari suatu produk sepanjang siklus hidupnya. Kegiatan pengabdian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan pengetahuan kepada Pengawas dan Analis Lingkungan di Dinas Lingkungan Hidup (DLH) Kabupaten Pangkep dalam memahami, memonitoring, dan mengevaluasi dampak lingkungan perusahaan sesuai persyaratan PROPER Nasional, s Jurusan Teknik Mesin, Fakultas Teknik dan Informatika, Universitas Patria Artha.erta mendukung tercapainya beberapa poin Sustainable Development Goals. Kegiatan pengabdian ini dilakukan dengan metode transfer IPTEKS kepada pihak mitra (DLH). Luarannya adalah kemampuan mitra dalam mengidentifikasi area perbaikan, tahapan siklus hidup penyebab dampak signifikan, melakukan penilaian dan evaluasi dampak lingkungan, menyampaikan hasil LCA, serta memberikan informasi berbasis data untuk pengambilan keputusan. Selama kegiatan pengabdian dilakukan pengukuran tingkat pemahaman peserta pelatihan tentang LCA dengan membagikan kuesioner pra kegiatan dan pasca kegiatan. Dari hasil kuesioner pra kegiatan menunjukkan 90% peserta belum pernah mendengar dan mempelajari terkait LCA. Berdasarkan kuesioner pasca kegiatan menunjukkan bahwa 100% peserta sudah mengetahui penggunaan dan pemanfaatan LCA secara umum dalam melakukan penilaian dampak lingkungan. ABSTRACT The rapid industrial development in Indonesia has a positive impact on the economy, but also has a negative impact on the environment due to a lack of attention to waste management from production activities. To reduce these adverse impacts, the implementation of cleaner production concepts becomes very important. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an approach to evaluate and measure the overall environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. This community service activity aims to provide knowledge to Environmental Supervisors and Analysts at the Pangkep Regency Environmental Service in understanding, monitoring, and evaluating the environmental impact of companies according to the requirements of the National PROPER, as well as supporting the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals points. This community service activity is carried out using the Science and Technology transfer method to the party (DLH). The expected outcomes are the ability of partners to identify areas for improvement, life cycle stages that cause significant impacts, conduct environmental impact assessments and evaluations, convey LCA results, and provide data-based information to support decision-making. During the community service activity, the level of understanding of the training participants about LCA was measured by distributing pre-activity and post-activity questionnaires. The results of the pre-activity questionnaire showed that 90% of participants had never heard of or studied LCA. Based on the post-activity questionnaire, it showed that 100% of participants were aware of the general use and utilization of LCA in conducting environmental impact assessments. Keywords: Life cycle assessment, production system, environmental impact, product life cycle.

Plastic debris ingestion poses an important and escalating threat to marine biodiversity. This includes both impacts from macro- and from microplastics. For macroplastics, impacts can, for example, stem from entanglement or ingestion of plastic pieces. In sustainability assessment tools, such as Life cycle assessment (LCA), attempts to include impacts from entanglement exist. However, although ingestion has been extensively documented across taxa and ocean basins, this critical impact pathway remains largely absent from Life Cycle Assessment. To contribute to closing this gap, we developed a global effect factor (EF) that quantifies the potentially affected fraction (PAF) of species impacted by macro- and micro-plastic ingestion in marine air-breathing vertebrates (seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles).We compiled and harmonized population-level ingestion data from 284 peer-reviewed studies encompassing 308 species and over 55,000 individuals. Based on the known distribution ranges of individual species, exposure to floating marine plastic debris was estimated across eight major ocean basins. Species-specific dose–response relationships linking ingestion prevalence to plastic concentration were then established and used to construct a field-based Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD). From this, we derived a hazardous concentration affecting 20 % of species above a 10 % ingestion threshold (HC20 = 51.7 kg km⁻³) and a corresponding EF of 3.87 × 10⁻³ PAF km³ kg⁻¹.Sensitivity analyses confirmed that the EF remained consistent within the same order of magnitude under varying modeling assumptions, supporting its robustness and transferability. This EF enables the explicit inclusion of plastic ingestion impacts in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) as a new distinct pathway of physical harm, complementing existing models for entanglement and ingestion of microplastics.By translating empirical field data into a quantifiable biodiversity impact metric, our study provides an essential bridge between measurements, indicators, and decision-making tools. Integrating such metrics will enhance the capacity of sustainability assessments to reflect the true ecological costs of plastic pollution.

The necessity of the impact assessment phase in life-cycle assessment (LCA) is presently debated. The crux of the debate lies in the poor accordance in some I.CA studies between the predicted environmental impact and the expected occurrence of actual environmental impact. That is in particular the case for impacts of a continental, regional and local character. We consider an impact assessment as being an indispensable phase of LCA, and see options for solving the identified problem. This article takes a closer look into the nature of the assessed impact in LCA in order to provide the basis for enhancement of life-cycle impact assessment. LCA is one of the analytical tools to support environmental policy focused on the control of present environmental problems. Nowadays, environmental problems are caused by concentration levels that result from the emissions of many sources together, rather than from single sources alone. The contribution from a single source is usually small or even marginal in comparison with the total contribution from all sources together. The multiple source character of the related impact categories provides the justification for the linear nature of the assessed impact in LCA. An article in the next issue of this journal will build further on this article, and will discuss the inclusion of temporal and spatial aspects (by a site-dependent approach) in order to enhance the accordance between the predicted environmental impact and the expected occurrence of actual environmental impact.

Within a product system of a life-cycle assessment (LCA), solid waste landfills should be treated as processes, because they are considered to be a part of the technical system. Hence, their inputs and outputs should be included in the life-cycle inventory analysis and evaluated within the life-cycle impact assessment. The aim of this paper is to discuss the consideration of emissions from solid waste landfills within the LCA framework and to investigate the uncertainties in existing modelling approaches. Based on this analysis the main limitations are discussed and recommendations for incorporating long-term emissions from landfills in LCA are made. It is emphasized that the lack of consideration of spatial and temporal characteristics of long-term emissions turns out to be an important source of uncertainty when modelling the environmental impact of landfills. For toxicity categories in particular, the life-cycle impact assessment might be the dominant source of uncertainty. However, in order to understand the reliability of LCA results with respect to landfill emissions, quantitative uncertainty should be routinely included in LCA studies and sources of uncertainty need to be thoroughly discussed.

A novel ZSM-5@SiC structured catalytic packing (ZSM-5@SiC SCP) was recently proposed to combine catalysis and separation functionality in one unit for reactive distillation (RD) towards the synthesis of green solvent ethyl lactate (EL). This work conducts life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis for the RD process to identify relevant hot spots and suggest further development. Based on the cradle-to-gate LCA, the major environmental hot spots of the proposed RD process based on SCP are identified as in the section of raw materials extraction and RD. Compared to the petrochemical counterparts, bio-derived lactic acid and ethanol show the advantage to reduce carbon emission and resource depletion, but having significant impacts on aggravate stratospheric ozone depletion and land use especially. LCA results also show that preparation ZSM-5@SiC SCP creates environmental impacts due to the usage of electricity and relevant raw materials. Comparative LCA and economic analysis were conducted for the RD processes using ZSM-5@SiC SCP and seepage catalytic packing internal (SCPI), respectively, and a conventional process with separated reaction and separation unit operations. The findings suggest that compared to the conventional process RD processes can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and total annual cost (TAC) due to process intensification. The process employing ZSM-5@SiC SCP incurs a higher TAC than that based on SCPI (with resin catalysts), which is due to its comparatively low catalytic activity, requiring more ZSM-5@SiC SCP and higher column to achieve the production target.

The tofu industry is one of the industries that has grown and developed a lot in Indonesia to meet the community's food needs. In the tofu production cycle, many activities have the potential to produce emissions that are harmful to the environment, one of which is greenhouse gases (GHGs). There are various activities carried out by the tofu industry to produce products that are ready for sale, starting from the procurement of raw materials, the production and distribution of tofu to the market. The longer the tofu production chain, the greater the potential to produce GHG emissions. To find out the amount of GHG emissions produced, it is necessary to take a tofu product life cycle (LCA) assessment. Therefore, this study aims to calculate the GHG emissions produced in the tofu production cycle in the X’s tofu industry. The results show that X’s tofu industry produces GHG emissions of 3,373.53 KgCO2eq per 300 kg soybean which originate from the use of electricity, gasoline, firewood, and liquid waste. Every activity carried out also contributes to the emergence of GHG emissions. The highest GHG comes from the use of firewood of 3,198.81 KgCO2eq, meanwhile, the stage that generates the most GHG is during the cooking stage. Alternative improvements that can be made to reduce emissions are minimizing the use of transportation equipment, minimizing water usage (water reduction), water reuse, converting the use of firewood to LPG, and utilizing liquid waste into biogas for the cooking process. Keywords:   emission, greenhouse gas (GHG), life cycle assessment (LCA), tofu industry

Environmental impacts and mitigation potentials of CO2-based biodegradable plastic based on life cycle assessment – A case study of poly(propylene carbonate)

Life cycle assessment in support of sustainable transportation

Purpose Infill materials play a pivotal role in determining buildings’ life cycle costing (LCC) and environmental impacts. International standards prescribe LCC and life cycle assessments (LCA) to assess materials’ economic and environmental sustainability. The existing methods of LCC and LCA are tedious and time-consuming, reducing their practical application. This study sought to integrate LCC and LCA with building information modeling (BIM) to develop a swift and efficient approach for evaluating the life cycle performance of infill materials. Design/methodology/approach The BIM model for a case study was prepared using Autodesk Revit®, and the study included four infill materials (lightweight aggregate concrete block (LECA), autoclaved cellular concrete (AAC), concrete masonry and bricks). LCC was conducted using Revit® and Autodesk Insight 360® to estimate costs incurred across different project phases. LCA was conducted using “One Click LCA®,” a BIM-based platform featuring a comprehensive material inventory. Carbon emissions, acidification, and eutrophication were chosen as environmental impact factors for LCA. Findings LECA was the preferred choice due to its lower cost and environmental impact. Its lifetime cost of $440,618 was 5.4% lower than bricks’, with 2.8% lower CO2 emissions than AAC’s, which were second-place options, respectively. LECA had 6.4 and 27% lower costs than concrete blocks, and AAC’s carbon emissions were 32 and 58% lower than concrete blocks and bricks, respectively. Originality/value BIM has been employed for life cycle analysis in existing literature, but its efficacy in evaluating the lifetime costs and environmental impacts of infill materials remains unexplored. The current study presents a BIM-based approach for conducting LCC and LCA of infill materials, facilitating informed decision-making during the planning phase and promoting sustainable construction practices.

• Linking observed entanglement prevalence to plastic debris exposure in SSD-approach. • Quantifying a spatially-explicit indicator of potential entanglement impacts. • Presenting application options for life cycle and risk assessments. Marine animals have been known to interact with and become entangled in plastic debris for decades. Despite increasing annual input volumes of plastic waste to the natural environment and the threat this constitutes to marine biodiversity, impacts of mismanaged plastic waste generally remain unquantified in environmental impact assessments. In this paper, we develop a Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) approach for estimating a spatially differentiated indicator of potential macroplastic entanglement impacts with global coverage of the world’s oceans. This constitutes a key modelling step that contributes towards the inclusion of plastic litter effects in impact assessments. We gathered entanglement incidence data for 20 species of marine mammals, turtles and birds from different populations and marine regions. To capture species-specific sensitivities to entanglement and spatially varying concentrations of plastic debris, concentration–response modelling of field data was used to develop the SSD-based model. This was achieved by linking population specific entanglement records to corresponding regional areas of exposure and an existing global model of plastic debris concentrations. The SSD was further applied to derive an estimate of the Potentially Affected Fraction (PAF) of species on a global scale, highlighting regional hotspots of potential entanglement impacts at current levels of marine plastic pollution. This indicator can be adapted and applied in impact assessments in order to account for potential impacts of mismanaged plastic waste ending up in marine ecosystems.

A life-cycle impact assessment of hardwood resources across the eastern United States was conducted based on the life-cycle inventory data for hardwood forest resource management and was integrated with the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS). This integration allowed for the analysis of forest carbon dynamics in the four subregions: northeast (NE), mid-Atlantic (MA), southeast (SE), and northcentral (NC). The system boundary was selected to be consistent with the A1 module (extraction and upstream production) required by an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for wood products. The results indicated that uneven-aged management (UA) yielded higher carbon stocks than even-aged management (EA) across all subregions. In contrast, clearcutting under EA resulted in higher carbon removal. Fuel consumption-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for manual and mechanized harvesting systems for both management practices ranged between 9.13 and 12.15 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per cubic meter (kg CO2e/m3), with an average of 11 kg CO2e/m3 of hardwood timber harvested across all subregions. It was estimated that 63-187 megajoules (MJ) of energy were needed to produce 1 m3 of hardwood sawlogs. The extraction and loading processes contributed more to the total GHG emissions than the felling and processing within the system boundary. The study concluded that UA led to higher forest carbon and net carbon balance (excluding carbon stock) compared to EA in the eastern U.S. hardwood forests. Forest management practices should be determined based on the ecological goal of increasing forest carbon stock and the economic goal of maximizing timber production. The findings of this study have implications for policymakers and forest managers in mitigating climate change and enhancing carbon sequestration through sustainable forest management practices for timber production. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to assess the environmental impact of hardwood cross-laminated timber (CLT) production in the eastern United States. CLT is an emerging sustainable construction material with the potential to replace concrete. LCA has been widely applied to quantify the environmental impact of CLT materials and buildings. However, current research on CLT LCA mainly focuses on softwoods, lacking reports on hardwood CLT. Despite the less frequent utilization of hardwoods by CLT manufacturers, hardwood CLT is technically feasible and provides value-added uses for low-quality timber. This study developed a cradle-to-gate life cycle modeling framework for the production of hardwood CLT in the eastern United States to address this research gap. The framework integrates process-based modeling of log production, lumber production, and CLT production and explores