Use of life cycle assessments to evaluate the environmental footprint of contaminated sediment remediation

Ecological and human risks often drive the selection of remedial alternatives for contaminated sediments. Traditional human and ecological risk assessment (HERA) includes assessing risk for benthic organisms and aquatic fauna associated with exposure to contaminated sediments before and after remediation as well as risk for human exposure but does not consider the environmental footprint associated with implementing remedial alternatives. Assessment of environmental effects over the whole life cycle (i.e., Life Cycle Assessment, LCA) could complement HERA and help in selecting the most appropriate sediment management alternative. Even though LCA has been developed and applied in multiple environmental management cases, applications to contaminated sediments and marine ecosystems are in general less frequent. This paper implements LCA methodology for the case of the polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/F)-contaminated Grenland fjord in Norway. LCA was applied to investigate the environmental footprint of different active and passive thin-layer capping alternatives as compared to natural recovery. The results showed that capping was preferable to natural recovery when analysis is limited to effects related to the site contamination. Incorporation of impacts related to the use of resources and energy during the implementation of a thin layer cap increase the environmental footprint by over 1 order of magnitude, making capping inferior to the natural recovery alternative. Use of biomass-derived activated carbon, where carbon dioxide is sequestered during the production process, reduces the overall environmental impact to that of natural recovery. The results from this study show that LCA may be a valuable tool for assessing the environmental footprint of sediment remediation projects and for sustainable sediment management.     

纸类产品的生命周期评价

制浆造纸业的资源能源消耗量大,且环境污染。生命周期评价方法广泛用于识别分析纸类产品的潜在环境影响,但该方法的理论体系仍存在尚待解决的问题。通过回顾近年来发表的部分相关中英文期刊文献,总结了这些文献的主要结论,并基于文献初步探讨了生命周期评价方法的选择对结论可能产生的影响。     

Evaluation of the economic and environmental sustainability of high pressure processing of foods

A comparative evaluation of the environmental/economic performance of High Pressure Processing (HPP) technology for food processing is made using Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies. Thermal pasteurization (TP), in the form of indirect system (with energy recovery) and of retort process, and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP), are taken as benchmark during the evaluation, as traditional food processing technologies typically used to process orange juice (TP) and sliced Parma ham (MAP). Primary data on costs and consumption of HPP, TP and MAP plants were obtained from companies. Secondary data for LCA analysis was retrieved from the Ecoinvent 3.4 database and from available scientific literature.As a result of the assessment, HPP appears as more expensive than both TP processes, but turns out to have a lower environmental impact in almost all impact categories. Compared to MAP, HPP is less expensive and also has a lower impact in most of the impact categories, as MAP requires a significant amount of packaging materials and food gases. Industrial relevance: High pressure processing (HPP) is a well-known non-thermal technology, which since its introduction has had limited use, mainly due to the high cost of the electricity required for the process. Nowadays, however, new technologies in the food processing and new food product applications could make it more widely used. To correctly evaluate whether HPP technology is actually cost-effective and has low impact on the environment, detailed economic and environmental analyses have been carried out in this paper. Results are expected to enhance the use of HPP technology in industry.     

Evaluation of process- and input-output-based life cycle inventory data with regard to truncation and aggregation issues

Life cycle assessments (LCA) and environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) analyses both strive to account for direct and indirect environmental impacts of goods and services. Different methods have been developed to hybridize these two techniques and minimize the impact of their respective shortcomings on final assessments. These weaknesses, however, have not been extensively studied in a quantitative manner, especially not for complete LCA and EEIO databases. To this end, we jointly analyzed process-based and input-output-based data sets. We first evaluated their complementarity. Though the LCA data was more detailed overall, some sectors of the economy were more precisely represented in the EEIO database. We then contrasted the representation of the different economic sectors in the LCA database with the economic, environmental, and structural importance of these sectors. The weakness of the correlation results led us to conclude that process-inventory efforts have not been systematically directed at the most important sectors of the economy. The LCA data was also used to evaluate the sensitivity of EEIO data to aggregation uncertainty. This sensitivity proved highly inhomogeneous. We conclude the presence of important research inefficiencies stemming from the lack of hybrid perspective in the compilation of LCA and EEIO data.     

Food Waste Management by Life Cycle Assessment of the Food Chain

ABSTRACT: In the past, environmental activities in the food industry used to be focused on meeting the requirements set by authorities on waste and sewage disposal and, more recently, regarding emissions to air. Today environmental issues are considered an essential part of the corporate image in progressive food industries. To avoid sub-optimization, food waste management should involve assessing the environmental impact of the whole food chain. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO-standardized method to assess the environmental impact of a food product. It evaluates the resources used to perform the different activities through the chain of production from raw material to the user step. It also summarizes the emission/waste to air, water, and land from the same activities throughout the chain. These emissions are then related to the major environmental concerns such as eutrophication, acidification, and ecotoxicity, the factors most relevant for the food sector. The food industry uses the LCAs to identify the steps in the food chain that have the largest impact on the environment in order to target the improvement efforts. It is then used to choose among alternatives in the selection of raw materials, packaging material, and other inputs as well as waste management strategies. A large number of food production chains have been assessed by LCAs over the years. This will be exemplified by a comparison of the environmental impact of ecologically grown raw materials to those conventionally grown. Today LCA is often integrated into process and product development, for example, in a project for reduction of water usage and waste valorization in a diversified dairy.     

Combinatorial life cycle assessment to inform process design of industrial production of algal biodiesel

The use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel production is a rapidly growing industry, in the United States and globally. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is presented that compares various methods, either proposed or under development, for algal biodiesel to inform the most promising pathways for sustainable full-scale production. For this analysis, the system is divided into five distinct process steps: (1) microalgae cultivation, (2) harvesting and/or dewatering, (3) lipid extraction, (4) conversion (transesterification) into biodiesel, and (5) byproduct management. A number of technology options are considered for each process step and various technology combinations are assessed for their life cycle environmental impacts. The optimal option for each process step is selected yielding a best case scenario, comprised of a flat panel enclosed photobioreactor and direct transesterification of algal cells with supercritical methanol. For a functional unit of 10 GJ biodiesel, the best case production system yields a cumulative energy demand savings of more than 65 GJ, reduces water consumption by 585 m(3) and decreases greenhouse gas emissions by 86% compared to a base case scenario typical of early industrial practices, highlighting the importance of technological innovation in algae processing and providing guidance on promising production pathways.     

Silver emissions and their environmental impacts: a multilevel assessment

A detailed accounting of environmental releases of silver is presented for the year 1997, based on data from Yale University's Stocks and Flows (STAF) project and other sources. The analysis is carried out for 64 countries, eight regions, and the world. From the chemical composition and receiving media of these different releases, each emission category is assigned an environmental impact score in accordance with the Indiana Relative Chemical Hazard (IRCH) ranking system. Flows are scaled by impact and land area to form an overall semiquantitative assessment of the environmental impact of silver. Of the 64 countries, the United States has the highest gross emissions for nearly all flows to the environment. On a regional basis, Asia is the largest emitter of silver directly to land and water. In major silver-producing countries, tailings tend to have the highest environmental impact of any emissions category; in nonproducing countries, it is dissipation to land (Hong Kong having the highest impact in this category). Globally, more than 13 Gg of silver are emitted annually to the environment, with that in tailings and landfills making up almost three-fourths of the total. The utility of this method for evaluating the environmental impact of other metals is explored.     

Decision support for green supply chain operations by integrating dynamic simulation and LCA indicators: diaper case study

As the issue of environmental sustainability is becoming an important business factor, companies are now looking for decision support tools to assess the fuller picture of the environmental impacts associated with their manufacturing operations and supply chain (SC) activities. Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is widely used to measure the environmental consequences assignable to a product. However, it is usually limited to a high-level snapshot of the environmental implications over the product value chain without consideration of the dynamics arising from the multitiered structure and the interactions along the SC. This paper proposes a framework for green supply chain management by integrating a SC dynamic simulation and LCA indicators to evaluate both the economic and environmental impacts of various SC decisions such as inventories, distribution network configuration, and ordering policy. The advantages of this framework are demonstrated through an industrially motivated case study involving diaper production. Three distinct scenarios are evaluated to highlight how the proposed approach enables integrated decision support for green SC design and operation.     

培育肉与传统肉类生产过程对环境的影响

通过分析传统肉类生产方式面临的挑战及培育肉产生的环境影响,表明培育肉是一种在生产技术、发展理念以及未来意义上具有先进性的肉类生产形式。通过对培育肉不同生命周期评估（LCA）的对比分析表明,影响培育肉生产的环境因素是多方面的,包括原料来源、细胞生长密度等,与传统肉类生产方式相比,培育肉的生产过程将占据更少的土地面积、消耗几乎可以忽略不计的淡水资源、在温室气体排放方面也具有较为明显的优势。另外,在降低培育肉生命周期对环境影响方面仍然有较大的提升空间,需通过开发适于工业生产的具体工艺及攻关系列基础技术问题进一步降低其对环境的影响,以满足人们对可持续发展的要求。然而,由于目前培育肉的工业化生产工艺尚未建立,对于细胞增殖、分化和培育肉质量控制等尚无明确参数,导致不同LCA之间存在较大差异,为促进培育肉产业化发展需尽快确定培育肉的工业化生产工艺,按照目前我国的装备试剂工业基础水平明确符合我国技术发展现状的培育肉LCA,为我国未来制定相关培育肉产业化发展政策提供理论依据。     

Endocrine modulating chemicals in food packaging: A review of phthalates and bisphenols

Phthalates and bisphenol chemicals have been widely used globally in packaging materials and consumer products for several decades. These highly functional chemicals have become a concern due to their toxicity (i.e., endocrine/hormone modulators) and ability to migrate from food contact materials (FCMs) into food matrices and the environment resulting in human and environmental health risks. FCMs, composed of postconsumer materials, are particularly high risk for containing these compounds. The evaluation of postconsumer recycled feedstocks in FCMs is compulsory and selection of an appropriate detection method to comply with applicable regulations is necessary to evaluate human and environmental safety. Numerous regulations have been proposed and passed globally for both compound classes that are recognized as priority pollutants by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union. Several brand owners and retailers have also released their own “restricted substance lists” due to the mounting consumer and regulatory concerns. This review article has two goals: (1) discuss the utilization, toxicology, human exposure routes, and occurrence levels of phthalates and bisphenols in FCMs and associated legislation in various countries and (2) discuss critical understanding and updates for detection/quantification techniques. Current techniques discussed include extraction and sample preparation methods (solid-phase microextraction [SPME], headspace SPME, Soxhlet procedure, ultrasound-assisted extraction), chromatographic techniques (gas, liquid, detectors), and environmental/blank considerations for quantification. This review complements a previous review of phthalates in foods from 2009 by discussing phthalate and bisphenol characteristics, analytical methods of determining concentrations in packaging materials, and their influence on the migration potential into food.     

Improvements to Emergy evaluations by using Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely recognized, multicriteria and standardized tool for environmental assessment of products and processes. As an independent evaluation method, emergy assessment has shown to be a promising and relatively novel tool. The technique has gained wide recognition in the past decade but still faces methodological difficulties which prevent it from being accepted by a broader stakeholder community. This review aims to elucidate the fundamental requirements to possibly improve the Emergy evaluation by using LCA. Despite its capability to compare the amount of resources embodied in production systems, Emergy suffers from its vague accounting procedures and lacks accuracy, reproducibility, and completeness. An improvement of Emergy evaluations can be achieved via (1) technical implementation of Emergy algebra in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI); (2) selection of consistent Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) as characterization factors for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA); and (3) expansion of the LCI system boundaries to include supporting systems usually considered by Emergy but excluded in LCA (e.g., ecosystem services and human labor). Whereas Emergy rules must be adapted to life-cycle structures, LCA should enlarge its inventory to give Emergy a broader computational framework. The matrix inversion principle used for LCAs is also proposed as an alternative to consistently account for a large number of resource UEVs.     

Holz und Holzprodukte in vergleichenden Ökobilanzen

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aspire to quantify the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. The technique is used to identify and realize opportunities to improve the environmental aspects of processes, and to compare between products with equivalent function and performance in order to select the environmentally best ones. Especially when the intended application is a comparative assertion, it is inevitable that the key features and methodological framework currently discussed in ISO be accepted and applied to fulfill the specific requirements of transparency, completeness, reproducibility, reliability, and consistency. Because construction affects our environment to a significant extent, building materials and products have been evaluated in LCA studies for several years. In this context, wood and timber based products do have an exceptional position, in that they are produced from a resource which itself is an integral part of the forest ecosystem. It has not yet been possible to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable forestry to such an extent that they can be used in LCA to underline the environmental benefits of wood with CO₂-storage being the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, the examples selected from applications in building construction and power supply lines manifest that timber derived products have an excellent environmental position when compared to alternative products. This is mainly due to the sparing use of fossile energy resources, low contribution to the greenhouse effect, and small waste volume.     

Evaluating uncertainty in environmental life-cycle assessment. A case study comparing two insulation options for a Dutch one-family dwelling

The evaluation of uncertainty is relatively new in environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA). It provides useful information to assess the reliability of LCA-based decisions and to guide future research toward reducing uncertainty. Most uncertainty studies in LCA quantify only one type of uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty due to input data (parameter uncertainty). However, LCA outcomes can also be uncertain due to normative choices (scenario uncertainty) and the mathematical models involved (model uncertainty). The present paper outlines a new methodology that quantifies parameter, scenario, and model uncertainty simultaneously in environmental life-cycle assessment. The procedure is illustrated in a case study that compares two insulation options for a Dutch one-family dwelling. Parameter uncertainty was quantified by means of Monte Carlo simulation. Scenario and model uncertainty were quantified by resampling different decision scenarios and model formulations, respectively. Although scenario and model uncertainty were not quantified comprehensively, the results indicate that both types of uncertainty influence the case study outcomes. This stresses the importance of quantifying parameter, scenario, and model uncertainty simultaneously. The two insulation options studied were found to have significantly different impact scores for global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, and eutrophication. The thickest insulation option has the lowest impact on global warming and eutrophication, and the highest impact on stratospheric ozone depletion.     

Life cycle assessment as a tool for the environmental improvement of the tannery industry in developing countries

A representative leather tannery industry in a Latin American developing country has been studied from an environmental point of view, including both technical and economic analysis. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology has been used for the quantification and evaluation of the impacts of the chromium tanning process as a basis to propose further improvement actions. Four main subsystems were considered: beamhouse, tanyard, retanning, and wood furnace. Damages to human health, ecosystem quality, and resources are mainly produced by the tanyard subsystem. The control and reduction of chromium and ammonia emissions are the critical points to be considered to improve the environmental performance of the process. Technologies available for improved management of chromium tanning were profoundly studied, and improvement actions related to optimized operational conditions and a high exhaustion chrome-tanning process were selected. These actions related to the implementation of internal procedures affected the economy of the process with savings ranging from US dollars 8.63 to US dollars 22.5 for the processing of 1 ton of wet salt hides, meanwhile the global environmental impact was reduced to 44-50%. Moreover, the treatment of wastewaters was considered in two scenarios. Primary treatment presented the largest reduction of the environmental impact of the tanning process, while no significant improvement for the evaluated impact categories was achieved when combining primary and secondary treatments.     

How green is a chemical reaction? Application of LCA to green chemistry

In the present work Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used in order to evaluate a chemical reaction from an environmental point of view. The objective is to assess the usefulness of this methodology as an environmental tool to be applied to green chemistry. As an example, two routes of obtaining maleic anhydride are compared using LCA, to ascertain which one is the most environmentally friendly. From the results obtained in this work it can be concluded that LCA seems to be a valuable tool for the environmental assessment of a chemical reaction, because it takes into account all the life cycle stages of the process and discusses the impact of the environmental burdens inventoried according to a diversity of impact categories.     

棉纺织品的生命周期清单分析

运用生命周期评价的思想，对纯棉机织物进行了生命周期清单分析，旨在识别和评价棉纺织品的主要环境负载，为纺织品环境问题的解决和推进生命周期评价在纺织领域的应用提供有益参考。     

Why and how should we assess occupational health impacts in integrated product policy?

Integrated product policy (IPP) and life cycle assessment (LCA), one of the analytic tools used in IPP, focus traditionally on environmental impacts. However, in an attempt to consider other sustainability criteria and to avoid a shift from environmental health impacts to occupational health impacts one may want to include occupational health in IPP. Should and can occupational health impacts be included in LCA and IPP? Using published and unpublished occupational health data for injuries and illnesses and an economic input-output model of the United States, we provide attributional occupational health impacts measured in disability adjusted life years per dollars output for 491 industry sectors including supply chain impacts. Estimates for the "true" number of United States occupational health impacts suggest that this initial analysis underestimates the total impact 3-7-fold. A comparison suggests that United States occupational health impacts are about 10 times smaller than environmental health impacts and are, relatively speaking, important only for sectors with hazardous working environments but low environmental impacts. A consequential rather than attributional view suggests that a method to assess true consequences on long-term health impacts by product policies needs to be able to predict effects from present-day work place exposure and to account for likely changes in the labor market, including changes in unemployment rates and other substitution mechanisms.     

Life Cycle Assessment of multilayer polymer film used on food packaging field

The environmental impact of a multilayer polymer film, Low Density Poly Ethylene/Polyamide system (LDPE/PA), generally used on food packaging field, was estimated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of the work was to understand how to reduce the environmental pressure from plastic packages for its lower recovery and reuse, which can be improved by developing material recovery or other appropriate recycling technology to improve the cyclic materials flows and recycling ratio. LCA is a tool specifically developed for assessing the overall environmental burden of a product, including the system used for manufacturing it and its end-of-life treatment. This work provides a cradle-to-grave LCA study of a food packaging envelope made with a multilayer polymer film, with two different depth of 70 and 90 micron, and a study of the possibility to utilize a 50% of recycled LDPE and PA polymer pellets in order to reduce the environmental impact. A one square meter envelope is used as functional unit.