Life cycle assessment-based selection of a sustainable lightweight automotive engine hood design

Purpose

This study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based sustainable and lightweight automotive engine hood design and compares the life cycle energy consumption and potential environmental impacts of a steel (baseline) automotive engine hood with three types of lightweight design: advanced high strength steel (AHSS), aluminum, and carbon fiber.

Methods

A “cradle-to-grave” LCA including the production, use, and end-of-life stages is conducted in accordance with the ISO 14040/14044 standards. Onsite data collected by Chinese automotive companies in 2015 are used in the assessment. The Cumulative Energy Demand v1.09 method is applied to evaluate cumulative energy demand (CED), and the International Panel on Climate Change 2013 100a method is used to estimate global warming potential (GWP 100a).

Results and discussion

Among the different lightweight designs for the engine hood, the aluminum design is the most sustainable and has the lowest CED and GWP (100a) from a life cycle perspective, which is based on a lifetime driving distance of approximately 150,000 km. In addition, the AHSS design is also sustainable and lightweight. The carbon fiber design results in higher CED and GWP (100a) values than the steel (baseline) design during the life cycle but results in the largest CED and GWP (100a) savings through waste material recycling. The AHSS design exhibits the best break-even distance based on CED and GWP (100a) within 150,000 km.

Conclusions

Sensitivity analysis results show that the lifetime driving distance and material recycling rate have the largest impacts on the overall CEDs and GWPs of the three lightweight designs.

     

The EcoSpold 2 format—why a new format?

Purpose

This paper introduces the new EcoSpold data format for life cycle inventory (LCI).

Methods

A short historical retrospect on data formats in the life cycle assessment (LCA) field is given. The guiding principles for the revision and implementation are explained. Some technical basics of the data format are described, and changes to the previous data format are explained.

Results

The EcoSpold 2 data format caters for new requirements that have arisen in the LCA field in recent years.

Conclusions

The new data format is the basis for the Ecoinvent v3 database, but since it is an open data format, it is expected to be adopted by other LCI databases. Several new concepts used in the new EcoSpold 2 data format open the way for new possibilities for the LCA practitioners and to expand the application of the datasets in other fields beyond LCA (e.g., Material Flow Analysis, Energy Balancing).

     

Review: life cycle assessments in Nigeria,Ghana, and Ivory Coast

Purpose

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are considered common quantitative environmental techniques to analyze the environmental impact of products and/or services throughout their entire life cycle. A few LCA studies have been conducted in West Africa. This study aimed to discuss the availability of LCA (and similar) studies in Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast.

Methods

An online literature review of reports published between 2000 and 2016 was conducted using the following keywords: “life cycle assessment,” “carbon footprinting,” “water footprinting,” “environmental impact,” “Nigeria,” “Ghana” and “Ivory Coast.”

Results and discussion

A total of 31 LCA and environmental studies in Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast were found; all but one were conducted after 2008. These were mainly academic and most were publicly available. The industries studied included energy sector, waste management, real estate, food sector, and others such as timber and gold. The minimal number of studies on LCAs and environmental impacts in these West African states could be because companies are failing to promote quantitative environmental studies or studies are kept internally for the use of other assessment techniques. Furthermore, it could be that academic research institutions lack cutting-edge research resources for LCA, environmental impact, carbon, and water footprinting studies.

Conclusions

Further quantitative environmental studies should be conducted in Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast to increase the understanding of environmental impacts. In these countries, the existence of LCA studies (and by association the localized life cycle inventory (LCI) datasets) is crucial as more companies request this information to feed into background processes.

     

What causes more LCA research—subjective values,objective problems,or scientific traditions?

Purpose

This paper aims to verify whether life cycle assessment (LCA) research can be mainly treated as a kind of pro-environmental behavior due to public environment concerns, or academic and research activities based on scientific traditions.

Methods

This paper uses the international comparisons method for modeling and SPSS 16.0 for data processing. The data in this study were obtained from the Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme and the Web of Science by the Institute for Scientific Information.

Results and discussion

Our empirical study shows that the two main factors influencing the outputs per capita of the research articles in LCA in a particular country are the value of Environmental Performance Index, which represents the overall environmental quality, as well as the outputs per capita of the research articles in environmental science and technology. The results of statistical analysis show two J-type curves: with the change of the independent variables, the dependent variable changes in the same direction, but at a rate that is first slow, then fast.

Conclusions

LCA research results from scientific traditions and can only develop based on fundamental research in environmental science and technology. Further, LCA research is a pro-environmental behavior due to actual and objective effects rather than subjective motives as more research on LCA can accompany, even in some degree may lead to better overall environmental qualities. However, although environmental concerns are likely to affect the number of LCA studies as an implicit variable, this has not been empirically confirmed in our optimization model.

     

Comparative life cycle assessment of current and future electricity generation systems in the Czech Republic and Poland

Purpose

The purpose of the study was to perform a comparative life cycle assessment of current and future electricity generation systems in the Czech Republic and Poland. The paper also outlines the main sources of environmental impact for the different impact categories for the electricity generation technologies analyzed. The analyses covered the years 2000–2050, and were conducted within the framework of the international programme Interreg V-A Czech Republic-Poland, Microprojects Fund 2014–2020 in the Euroregion Silesia.

Methods

Environmental assessment was done using the life cycle assessment (LCA) and ReCiPe Midpoint and Endpoint methods, which allowed the presentation of different categories of environmental impact and damage. The LCA was based on ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, using SimaPro 8.2.3 software with the Ecoinvent 3.2 database. The analyses cover both the current electricity production structures in the Czech Republic and Poland, and the projected energy production.

Results and discussion

The LCA analyses performed for the energy systems under consideration in the Czech Republic and Poland enabled a comparative analysis of current and forecast energy systems in these countries, as well as identification of the main sources of environmental impact. Comparative analysis of the LCA results showed that current and future electricity generation systems in Poland caused higher environmental impact there, than in the Czech Republic.

Conclusions

The assessment of the life cycle of electricity sources showed that the main determinant of the negative impact on the environment of energy systems in both Poland and the Czech Republic was the consumption of solid fuels, and in particular, the consumption of lignite. It is important to highlight that this is the first attempt of a comparative LCA of electricity production in the Czech Republic and Poland. This is also the first approach that contains analyses of the life cycle assessment of both present and future energy systems. The economic assessment and eco-efficiency of current and future electricity generation systems in European Union countries will be addressed in future research.

     

On the boundary between economy and environment in life cycle assessment

Purpose

We investigate how the boundary between product systems and their environment has been delineated in life cycle assessment and question the usefulness and ontological relevance of a strict division between the two.

Methods

We consider flows, activities and impacts as general terms applicable to both product systems and their environment and propose that the ontologically relevant boundary is between the flows that are modelled as inputs to other activities (economic or environmental)—and the flows that—in a specific study—are regarded as final impacts, in the sense that no further feedback into the product system is considered before these impacts are applied in decision-making. Using this conceptual model, we contrast the traditional mathematical calculation of the life cycle impacts with a new, simpler computational structure where the life cycle impacts are calculated directly as part of the Leontief inverse, treating product flows and environmental flows in parallel, without the need to consider any boundary between economic and environmental activities.

Results and discussion

Our theoretical outline and the numerical example demonstrate that the distinctions and boundaries between product systems and their environment are unnecessary and in some cases obstructive from the perspective of impact assessment, and can therefore be ignored or chosen freely to reflect meaningful distinctions of specific life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. We show that our proposed computational structure is backwards compatible with the current practice of LCA modelling, while allowing inclusion of feedback loops both from the environment to the economy and internally between different impact categories in the impact assessment.

Conclusions

Our proposed computational structure for LCA facilitates consistent, explicit and transparent modelling of the feedback loops between environment and the economy and between different environmental mechanisms. The explicit and transparent modelling, combining economic and environmental information in a common computational structure, facilitates data exchange and re-use between different academic fields.

     

LCA study of unconsumed food and the influence of consumer behavior

Purpose

In the light of anthropogenic resource depletion and the resulting influences on the greenhouse effect as well as globally occurring famine, food waste has garnered increased public interest in recent years. The aim of this study is to analyze the environmental impacts of food waste and to determine to what extent consumers’ behavior influences the environmental burden of food consumption in households.

Methods

A life cycle assessment (LCA) study of three food products is conducted, following the ISO 14040/44 life cycle assessment guidelines. This study addresses the impact categories climate change (GWP100), eutrophication (EP), and acidification (AP). Primary energy demand (PED) is also calculated. For adequate representation of consumer behavior, scenarios based on various consumer types are generated in the customer stage. The customer stage includes the food-related activities: shopping, storage, preparation, and disposal of food products as well as the disposal of the sales packaging.

Results and discussion

If the consumer acts careless towards the environment, the customer stage appears as the main hotspot in the LCA of food products. The environmental impact of food products can be reduced in the customer stage by an environmentally conscious consumer. Shopping has the highest effect on the evaluated impact categories and the PED. Additionally, consumers can reduce the resulting emissions by decreasing the electric energy demand, particularly concerning food storage or preparation. Moreover, results show that the avoidance of wasting unconsumed food can reduce the environmental impact significantly.

Conclusions

Results of this study show that the influence of consumer behavior on the LCA results is important. The customer stage of food products should not be overlooked in LCA studies. To enable comparison among results of other LCA studies, the LCA community needs to develop a common methodology for modeling consumer behavior.

     

Regionalization of agri-food life cycle assessment: a review of studies in Portugal and recommendations for the future

Purpose

One of the main trends in life cycle assessment (LCA) today is towards increased regionalization in inventories and impact assessment methods. LCA studies require the collection of activity data but also of increasingly region-specific background data to accurately depict supply chain processes and enable the application of an increasing number of geographically explicit impact assessment models. This is particularly important for agri-food products. In this review, we assess progress in Portugal towards this goal and provide recommendations for future developments.

Methods

We perform a comprehensive review of available LCA studies conducted for Portuguese agri-food products, in order to evaluate the current state of Portuguese agri-food LCA. Among other issues, we assess availability of data, methods used, level of regionalization, impact assessment model relevance and coherence for inter-product comparability. We also provide conclusions and recommendations based on recent developments in the field.

Results and discussion

We found 22 LCA studies, covering 22 different products. The analysis of these studies reveals limitations in inter-study comparability. The main challenges have to do with a lack of country-specific foreground data sources applied consistently in the studies found, with discrepancies in impact assessment categories, and with the use of simple functional units that may misrepresent the product analyzed.

Conclusions

We conclude that Portuguese agri-food LCA studies do not have a systematic and country-scale approach in order to guarantee regional accuracy and comparability. We propose a research strategy to engage the Portuguese agri-food LCA community in devising a consistent framework before practical application studies are conducted.

     

Conceptualising attributional LCA is necessary for resolving methodological issues such as the appropriate form of land use baseline

Purpose

The purposes of this commentary are to further an on-going debate concerning the appropriate form of land use baseline for attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) and to respond to a number of arguments advanced by Soimakallio (Int J Life Cycle Assess 20:1364–1375, 2016). The commentary also seeks to clarify the conceptual nature of attributional LCA.

Methods

The overarching approach for resolving the question of the appropriate form of land use baseline for attributional LCA is to clarify what attributional LCA is seeking to represent, i.e. methodological questions can only be resolved if it is clear what the method is seeking to do. An illustrative example is used to explore the different results produced by ‘natural regeneration’ and ‘natural’ baselines.

Results and discussion

It is proposed that attributional LCA should be conceptualised as an inventory of anthropogenic impacts, conceptually akin to other forms of environmental inventory, such as national GHG inventories. The use of natural regeneration baselines is not consistent with this conceptualisation of attributional LCA, and such baselines necessitate further ad hoc or arbitrary adjustments, such as arbitrary temporal windows or the inconsistent treatment of natural emissions.

Conclusions

The use of natural regeneration baselines may be motivated by the impulse to make attributional LCA both an inventory-type method and an assessment of system-wide change. Pulling attributional LCA in two different directions at once results in a conceptually and methodologically incoherent method. The solution is to recognise attributional LCA as an inventory-type method, which therefore has distinct but complementary uses to consequential LCA, which is an assessment of system-wide change.

     

Geopolitical-related supply risk assessment as a complement to environmental impact assessment: the case of electric vehicles

Purpose

Introducing a geopolitical-related supply risk (GeoPolRisk) into the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework adds a criticality aspect to the current life cycle assessment (LCA) framework to more meaningfully address direct impacts on Natural Resource AoP. The weakness of resource indicators in LCA has been the topic of discussion within the life cycle community for some time. This paper presents a case study on how to proceed towards the integration of resource criticality assessment into LCA under the LCSA. The paper aims at highlighting the significance of introducing the GeoPolRisk indicator to complement and extend the established environmental LCA impact categories.

Methods

A newly developed GeoPolRisk indicator proposed by Gemechu et al., J Ind Ecol (2015) was applied to metals used in the life cycle of an electric vehicle, and the results are compared with an attributional LCA of the same resources. The inventory data is based on the publication by Hawkins et al., J Ind Ecol 17:53–64 (2013), which provides a current, transparent, and detailed life cycle inventory data of a European representative first-generation battery small electric vehicle.

Results and discussion

From the 14 investigated metals, copper, aluminum, and steel are the most dominant elements that pose high environmental impacts. On the other hand, magnesium and neodymium show relatively higher supply risk when geopolitical elements are considered. While, the environmental indicator results all tend to point the same hotspots which arise from the substantial use of resources in the electric vehicle’s life cycle, the GeoPolRisk highlights that there are important elements present in very small amounts but crucial to the overall LCSA. It provides a complementary sustainability dimension that can be added to conventional LCA as an important extension within LCSA.

Conclusions

Resource challenges in a short-term time perspective can be better addressed by including social and geopolitical factors in addition to the conventional indicators which are based on their geological availability. This is more significant for modern technologies such as electronic devices in which critical resources contribute to important components. The case study advances the use of the GeoPolRisk assessment method but does still face certain limitations that need further elaboration; however, directions for future research are promising.

     

From behind the curtain: talking about values in LCA

Purpose

Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) acknowledge that more input from social scientists can help advance the cause of life cycle management (LCM). This commentary offers a social science perspective on a long-running question within LCA, namely, how the field should manage not only stakeholders’ values but also those of practitioners themselves.

Methods

More than 60 interviews were conducted with LCA practitioners and their industry clients. Qualitative data were also collected through participant observation at several LCA and LCM conferences, a study of the field’s history, and extensive content and discourse analysis of LCA publications and online forums.

Results and discussion

Results show that LCA practitioners’ values are informed partly by the knowledge acquired through their LCA work. At the same time, LCA standards and professional norms implicitly advise practitioners to keep those values out of their work as much as possible, so as not to compromise its apparent objectivity. By contrast, many social scientists contend openly that value-based judgments, based on “situated knowledge,” can actually enhance the rigor, accountability, and credibility of scientific assessments.

Conclusions

LCA practitioners’ own situated knowledge justifies not only the value choices required by LCA but also their evaluative judgments of contemporary life cycle-based sustainability initiatives. This more critical voice could advance the goals of LCM while also boosting the credibility of LCA more generally.

     

Life cycle assessment in the furniture industry: the case study of an office cabinet

Purpose

In an effort to reduce the environmental impacts of the furniture sector, this study aimed to diagnose the environmental performance of an office cabinet throughout its life cycle.

Methods

An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) was used, based on the ISO 14044 Standard and ILCD Handbook. The scope of the study considered the entire supply chain, from cradle to grave, including the steps of pre-manufacturing, manufacturing, use, and post-use of the product. The impact assessment method was the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) 2011 midpoint.

Results and discussion

The results identified that the most significant environmental impact of the furniture life cycle was due to the distances covered and production of the main raw material, wood medium-density particleboard (MDP). The evaluation of transport scenarios showed environmental tradeoffs for truck fuel switches and environmental gains for the distribution of MDP from closer suppliers by truck, as well as from current supplier by truck and ship in the major categories. Furthermore, evaluation of the office cabinet post-use options showed that reuse, recycling, or energy recovery from waste cause significant environmental gains in the major categories. Wooden furniture is a potential carbon sink if its life cycle does not emit more greenhouse gases than its materials can store. The impacts of substitution scenarios varied depending on the type of product avoided.

Conclusions

The LCA proved a powerful method to diagnose and manage environmental impacts in complex product systems. The sensitivity analysis showed that it is possible to reduce the environmental impacts and, at the same time, make the furniture industry increase its economic gains and net carbon stock in the anthroposphere.

     

A modeling framework to evaluate sustainability of building construction based on LCSA

Purpose

Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is a method that combines three life cycle techniques, viz. environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). This study is intended to develop a LCSA framework and a case study of LCSA for building construction projects.

Methods

A LCSA framework is proposed to combine the three life cycle techniques. In the modeling phases, three life cycle models are used in the LCSA framework, namely the environmental model of construction (EMoC), cost model of construction (CMoC), and social-impact model of construction (SMoC). A residential building project is applied to the proposed LCSA framework from “cradle to the end of construction” processes to unveil the limitations and future research needs of the LCSA framework.

Results and discussion

It is found that material extraction and manufacturing account for over 90 % to the environmental impacts while they contribute to 61 % to the construction cost. In terms of social impacts, on-site construction performs better than material extraction and manufacturing, and on-site construction has larger contributions to the positive social impacts. The model outcomes are validated through interviews with local experts in Hong Kong. The result indicates that the performance of the models is generally satisfactory.

Conclusions

The case study has confirmed that LCSA is feasible. Being one of the first applications of LCSA on building construction, this study fulfills the current research gap and paves the way for future development of LCSA.

     

Implicit prioritization in life cycle assessment: text mining and detecting metapatterns in the literature

Purpose

Life cycle assessment aims to evaluate multiple kinds of environmental impact associated with a product or process across its life cycle. Objective evaluation is a common goal, though the community recognizes that implicit valuations of diverse impacts resulting from analytical choices and choice of subject matter are present. This research evaluates whether these implicit valuations lead to detectable priority shifts in the published English language academic LCA literature over time.

Methods

A near-comprehensive investigation of the LCA literature is undertaken by applying a text mining technique known as topic modeling to over 8200 environment-related LCA journal article titles and abstracts published between 1995 and 2014.

Results and discussion

Topic modeling using MALLET software and manual validation shows that over time, the LCA literature reflects a dramatic proportional increase in attention to climate change and a corresponding decline in attention to human and ecosystem health impacts, accentuated by rapid growth of the LCA literature. This result indicates an implicit prioritization of climate over other impact categories, a field-scale trend that appears to originate mostly in the broader environmental community rather than the LCA methodological community. Reasons for proportionally increasing publication of climate-related LCA might include the relative robustness of greenhouse gas emissions as an environmental impact indicator, a correlation with funding priorities, researcher interest in supporting active policy debates, or a revealed priority on climate versus other environmental impacts in the scholarly community.

Conclusions

As LCA becomes more widespread, recognizing and addressing the fact that analyses are not objective becomes correspondingly more important. Given the emergence of implicit prioritizations in the LCA literature, such as the impact prioritization of climate identified here with the use of computational tools, this work recommends the development and use of techniques that make impact prioritization explicit and enable consistent analysis of result sensitivity to value judgments. Explicit prioritization can improve transparency while enabling more systematic investigation of the effects of value choices on how LCA results are used.

     

LCA and LCC of the world’s longest pier: a case study on nickel-containing stainless steel rebar

Purpose

Built in 1941, the Progreso Pier was the first concrete structure in the world built with nickel-containing stainless steel reinforcement. The Pier has been in service for over 70 years without any significant repair or maintenance activities. The aim of this study was to understand the environmental and economic implications of selecting nickel-containing stainless steel reinforcement using the Progreso Pier as the case study.

Methods

A combined environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) study was conducted. The analysis considered the potential environmental impacts and the net present cost of the stainless steel reinforced structure from cradle to grave and compared it to the same structure using conventional carbon steel.

Results and discussion

The results indicated that while using stainless steel reinforcement resulted in a marginally higher environmental impact after initial construction, this is offset by the increased service life and, hence, less frequent maintenance and reconstruction activities. Relative to the as-built stainless steel reinforcement design, the environmental impacts of the carbon steel reinforced design are between 69 and 79 % higher over the analysis period. Similar observations were made for the other investigated impact categories. The cost implications of using stainless steel reinforcement show economic benefits that are complementary to the environmental benefits. Similar to the LCA, the service life benefits outweigh the higher unit costs for stainless steel, assuming a discount rate of 0.01 % as the baseline scenario. The carbon steel reinforced design has a net present cost that is 44 % higher than the as-built stainless steel reinforcement design. The crossover point for the two designs occurs at year 50, which corresponds to the reconstruction activity. A sensitivity analysis shows that the results and conclusions are sensitive to the choice in discount rate: Rates 3 % and lower produce net present costs that are lower for the as-built design; rates 4 % and higher produce net present costs that are lower for the alternative design.

Conclusions

The study demonstrates how LCA and LCC are complementary tools that can be used in decision-making for sustainable construction. The Progreso Pier exemplifies the importance of considering the entire life cycle with service life and recycling as well as long-term life cycle impacts of infrastructure projects from an environmental and economic perspective.

     

Bridge processes: a solution for LCI datasets independent of background databases

Introduction

New platforms are emerging that enable more data providers to publish life cycle inventory data.

Background

Providing datasets that are not complete LCA models results in fragments that are difficult for practitioners to integrate and use for LCA modeling. Additionally, when proxies are used to provide a technosphere input to a process that was not originally intended by the process authors, in most LCA software, this requires modifying the original process.

Results

The use of a bridge process, which is a process created to link two existing processes, is proposed as a solution.

Discussion

Benefits to bridge processes include increasing model transparency, facilitating dataset sharing and integration without compromising original dataset integrity and independence, providing a structure with which to make the data quality associated with process linkages explicit, and increasing model flexibility in the case that multiple bridges are provided. A drawback is that they add additional processes to existing LCA models which will increase their size.

Conclusions

Bridge processes can be an enabler in allowing users to integrate new datasets without modifying them to link to background databases or other processes they have available. They may not be the ideal long-term solution but provide a solution that works within the existing LCA data model.

     

The application of life cycle assessment to public policy development

Purpose

Despite the potential value it offers, integration of life cycle assessment (LCA) into the development of environmental public policy has been limited. This paper researches potential barriers that may be limiting the use of LCA in public policy development, and considers process opportunities to increase this application.

Methods

Research presented in this paper is primarily derived from reviews of existing literature and case studies, as well as interviews with key public policy officials with LCA experience. Direct experience of the author in LCA projects with public policy elements has also contributed to approaches and conclusions.

Results and discussion

LCAs have historically been applied within a rational framework, with experts conducting the analysis and presenting results to decision-makers for application to public policy development. This segmented approach has resulted in limited incorporation of LCA results or even a broader approach of life cycle thinking within the public policy development process. Barriers that limit the application of LCA within the public policy development process range from lack of technical knowledge and LCA understanding on the part of policy makers, to a lack of trust in LCA process and results. Many of the identified barriers suggest that the failure of LCAs to contribute positively to public policy development is due to the process within which the LCA is being incorporated, rather than technical problems in the LCA itself. Overcoming the barriers to effective use of LCAs in public policy development will require a more normative approach to the LCA process that incorporates a broad group of stakeholders at all stages of the assessment. Specifically, a set of recommendations have been developed to produce a more inclusive and effective process.

Conclusions

In an effort to effectively incorporate LCA within the overall public policy decision-making process, the decision-making process should incorporate a multi-disciplinary approach that includes a range of stakeholders and public policy decision-makers in a collaborative process. One of the most important aspects of incorporating LCA into public policy decisions is to encourage life cycle thinking among policy makers. Considering the life cycle implications will result in more informed and thoughtful decisions, even if a full LCA is not undertaken.

     

Principles for life cycle inventories of land use on a global scale

Purpose

To assess the diverse environmental impacts of land use, a standardization of quantifying land use elementary flows is needed in life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of this paper is to propose how to standardize the land use classification and how to regionalize land use elementary flows.

Materials and methods

In life cycle inventories, land occupation and transformation are elementary flows providing relevant information on the type and location of land use for land use impact assessment. To find a suitable land use classification system for LCA, existing global land cover classification systems and global approaches to define biogeographical regions are reviewed.

Results and discussion

A new multi-level classification of land use is presented. It consists of four levels of detail ranging from very general global land cover classes to more refined categories and very specific categories indicating land use intensities. Regionalization is built on five levels, first distinguishing between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biomes and further specifying climatic regions, specific biomes, ecoregions and finally indicating the exact geo-referenced information of land use. Current land use inventories and impact assessment methods do not always match and hinder a comprehensive assessment of land use impact. A standardized definition of land use types and geographic location helps to overcome this gap and provides the opportunity to test the optimal resolution of land cover types and regionalization for each impact pathway.

Conclusions and recommendation

The presented approach provides the necessary flexibility to providers of inventories and developers of impact assessment methods. To simplify inventories and impact assessment methods of land use, we need to find archetypical situations across impact pathways, land use types and regions, and aggregate inventory entries and methods accordingly.

     

A review of environmental life cycle assessment studies examining cheese production

Purpose

Cheese is one of the world’s most widely consumed dairy products and its popularity is ever growing. However, as concerns for the environmental impact of industries increase, products like cheese, which have a significant environmental impact, may lose their popularity. A commonly used technique to assess the environmental impact of a product is life cycle assessment (LCA). In this paper, a state-of-the-art review of LCA studies on the environmental impact of cheese production is presented.

Methods

Sixteen LCA studies, which explored the impact from the production of a variety of cheese types (fresh, mature and semi-hard) were examined and discussed. The four stages of the LCA were examined and the range of results of selected environmental impact categories (global warming potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential) were detailed and discussed.

Results and discussion

For each of these environmental impact categories, raw milk production was consistently found to be the most significant contributor to the total impact, which was followed by processing. It was found that allocation between cheese and its by-products was crucial in determining the impact of cheese production and standardisation or guidelines may be needed. Very little information relating to wastewater treatment system and processes were reported and this leads to inaccurate environmental impact modelling relating to these aspects of the manufacture of cheese. Very few studies included the design of packaging in terms of reducing food waste, which may significantly contribute to the overall environmental impact.

Conclusions

As raw milk production was found to have the greatest contribution to environmental impact, mitigation strategies at farm-level, particularly in relation to enteric fermentation and manure management, need to be implemented. Additionally, based on the literature, there is a suggestion that fresh cheese has less of an environmental impact than semi-hard cheeses, particularly when examining direct energy consumption. However, there needs to be more case studies investigated to justify this statement.

     

Spatially differentiated midpoint indicator for marine eutrophication of waterborne emissions in Sweden

Purpose

In life cycle assessment (LCA), eutrophication is commonly assessed using site-generic characterisation factors, despite being a site-dependent environmental impact. The purpose of this study was to improve the environmental relevance of marine eutrophication impact assessment in LCA, particularly regarding the impact assessment of waterborne nutrient emissions from Swedish agriculture.

Methods

Characterisation factors were derived using site-dependent data on nutrient transport for all agricultural soils in Sweden, divided into 968 catchment areas, and considering the Baltic Sea, the receiving marine compartment, as both nitrogen- and phosphorus-limited. These new characterisation factors were then applied to waterborne nutrient emissions from typical grass ley and spring barley cultivation in all catchments.

Results and discussion

The site-dependent marine eutrophication characterisation factors obtained for nutrient leaching from soils varied between 0.056 and 0.986 kg N_eq/kg N and between 0 and 7.23 kg N_eq/kg P among sites in Sweden. On applying the new characterisation factors to spring barley and grass ley cultivation at different sites in Sweden, the total marine eutrophication impact from waterborne nutrient emissions for these crops varied by up to two orders of magnitude between sites. This variation shows that site plays an important role in determining the actual impact of an emission, which means that site-dependent impact assessment could provide valuable information to life cycle assessments and increase the relevance of LCA as a tool for assessment of product-related eutrophication impacts.

Conclusions

Characterisation factors for marine eutrophication impact assessment at high spatial resolution, considering both the site-dependent fate of eutrophying compounds and specific nutrient limitations in the recipient waterbody, were developed for waterborne nutrient emissions from agriculture in Sweden. Application of the characterisation factors revealed variations in calculated impacts between sites in Sweden, highlighting the importance of spatial differentiation of characterisation modelling within the scale of the impact.