Introducing a product sustainability budget at an automotive company—one option to increase the use of LCSA results in decision-making processes

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Product sustainability assessment should evaluate the impacts on all three dimensions of sustainability (environment, economy, and society)....     

Exposure and toxicity characterization of chemical emissions and chemicals in products: global recommendations and implementation in USEtox

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Reducing chemical pressure on human and environmental health is an integral part of the global sustainability agenda. Guidelines for deriving...     

Flaws in the interpretation phase of bioenergy LCA fuel the debate and mislead policymakers

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - We hypothesize that the current heated scientific debate on bioenergy sustainability is fuelled by flaws in the interpretation phase of...     

International standards with a life cycle perspective: which dimension of sustainability is addressed?

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The aim of this study is to explore the dimensions of sustainability that addressed the most within international standards and thereby present...     

Improving the environmental performance of bio-waste management with life cycle thinking (LCT) and life cycle assessment (LCA)

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Globally, many countries worldwide aim at increasing the environmental sustainability of waste management activities. Special attention is...     

Future scenarios and life cycle assessment: systematic review and recommendations

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Future scenarios and life cycle assessment (LCA) are powerful tools that can provide early sustainability assessments of novel products,...     

Representing crop rotations in life cycle assessment: a review of legume LCA studies

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - There is an imperative to accurately assess the environmental sustainability of crop system interventions in the context of food security and...     

Recommending a new building structure to alleviate environmental impact in tropical climates: increasing the use of wood in construction

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The construction sector is interested in considering environmental implications as necessary criteria for sustainability. In this regard, wood...     

The challenge of incorporating animal welfare in a social life cycle assessment model of European chicken production

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - There is increasing public concern over standards of farm animal welfare, yet the majority of sustainability studies of livestock have thus far...     

Unveiling the social performance of selected agri-food chains in Costa Rica: the case of green coffee,raw milk and leafy vegetables

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Several frameworks coincide in the importance of addressing social impacts to ensure sustainability. However, the agri-food sector, regarded as...     

A life cycle assessment of the environmental impacts of a beef system in the USA

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The need to assess the sustainability attributes of the United States beef industry is underscored by its importance to food security locally...     

The population equivalent as a novel approach for life cycle assessment of cities and inter-city comparisons

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Since the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development was set, cities are gaining momentum in the sustainability debate as favorable hubs of...     

Applying multi-criteria decision-making on alternatives for earth-retaining walls: LCA,LCC, and S-LCA

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The aim of this research is to assess the sustainability performance of different concrete and stone walls being used in residential buildings...     

Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Corruption is one of the key social aspects, heavily impacting all three Planet-, People- and Prosperity sustainability pillars and is therefore...     

A bottom-up approach for implementation of Environmental Product Declarations in Mexico’s housing sector

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - After analyzing in previous papers the potential of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) as a sustainability tool in Mexico’s...     

Social sustainability in trade and development policy

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Social sustainability may be assessed using a variety of methods and indicators, such as the social footprint, social impact assessment, or...     

Preface—a new paradigm for life cycle thinking: exploring sustainability in urban development scenarios

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The main goal of this special issue is to further the understanding of how to integrate life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) methods and...     

Environmental impact evaluation of co-products: decision-aid tool for allocation in LCA

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - As sustainability has become an important asset for production systems, it is important to conduct life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. When...     

Interpreting life cycle assessment results for integrated sustainability decision support: can an ecological economic perspective help us to connect the dots?

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often described as a sustainability decision support tool. In practice, however, the interpretation and application of most LCA studies are restricted to eco-efficiency considerations, which provide an important but incomplete basis for sustainability decision-making. Recent methodological advances in the field enable assessing LCA results against sustainability boundaries or thresholds at planetary or more finely resolved scales. Weighting, although controversial, facilitates consistent, stakeholder-appropriate decision-making that reflects prioritization among multiple and potentially competing sustainability outcomes. Here, we discuss how the three minimum necessary criteria for sustainability (i.e., sustainable scale relative to biocapacity, distributive justice, and efficient allocation), as proposed by ecological economist Herman Daly, may provide an internally consistent basis for integrating these methodological developments, and for subsequently better positioning LCA as a sustainability decision support framework.

     

Integrated municipal waste management systems: An indicator to assess their environmental and economic sustainability

Tools based on Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) are routinely used to assess the environmental and economic performance of integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to quantify the environmental impacts, whereas Life Cycle Costing (LCC) allows financial and economic assessments. These tools require specific experience and knowledge, and a large amount of data.The aim of this project is the definition of an indicator for the assessment of the environmental and economic sustainability of integrated MSW management systems. The challenge is to define a simple but comprehensive indicator that may be calculated also by local administrators and managers of the waste system and not only by scientists or LCT experts.The proposed indicator is a composite one, constituted by three individual indicators: two of them assess the environmental sustainability of the system by quantifying the achieved material and energy recovery levels, while the third one quantifies the costs. The composite indicator allows to compare different integrated MSW management systems in an objective way, and to monitor the performance of a system over time.The calculation of the three individual indicators has been tested on the integrated MSW management systems of the Lombardia Region (Italy) as well as on four of its provinces (Milano, Bergamo, Pavia, and Mantova).