An Environmental Evaluation of the Cut-Flower Supply Chain (Dendranthema grandiflora) Through a Life Cycle Assessment

Colombia is a major flower exporter of a wide variety of species, among which the chrysanthemum plays a major role due to its exporting volume and profitability on the international market. This study examines the major environmental impacts of the chrysanthemum supply chain through a life cycle assessment (LCA). One kg of stems export quality was used as the functional unit (FU). The study examines cut-flowers systems from raw material extraction to final product commercialization for two markets (London and Miami) and analyzes two agroecosystems: one certified system and one uncertified system. The transport phase to London resulted in more significant environmental impacts than the transport phase to Miami, and climate change (GWP100) category was significant in both cities, generating values of 9.10E+00 and 2.51E+00 kg CO2-eq*FU for London and Miami, respectively. Furthermore, when exclusively considering pre-export phases, the uncertified system was found to have a greater impact than the certified system with respect to fertilizer use (certified 1,448E-02 kg*FU, uncertified 2.23E-01 kg*FU) and pesticide use (certified 1.24 E-04 kg*FU, uncertified 2.24E-03 kg*FU). With respect to the crop management, eutrophication (EP) and acidification (AP) processes imposed the greatest level of environmental impact. Strategies that would significantly reduce the environmental impact of this supply chain are considered, including the use of shipping and a 50% reduction in fertilizer use.

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Evaluation of Environmental Impact of Cement Production in Algeria Using Life Cycle Assessment

International Letters of Chemistry Physics and Astronomy ◽

10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilcpa.45.79 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 45 ◽

pp. 79-84

Author(s):

S. Boughrara ◽

M. Chedri ◽

K. Louhab

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Raw Material ◽

Cement Production ◽

Dry Process ◽

The Impact ◽

Inputs And Outputs

The aim of this study is the use of Life Cycle Assessment, to evaluate the impact generated by cement manufactory situated in Sour EL Ghozlane town in Algeria country, which use the dry process to produce cement Portland. The LCA method is used for compiling and examining the inputs and outputs of energy, raw material and environmental impacts directly attributable to the manufacture and functioning of a product throughout its life. It is also used to determine element and energy contributing to each impact evaluated. Potentials impacts are evaluated using the SimaProV.7.1 software and IMPACT2000+ method in this study.

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A Review on Life Cycle Assessment of the Olive Oil Production

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su14020654 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 654

Author(s):

Mattia Rapa ◽

Salvatore Ciano

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Supply Chain ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Olive Oil ◽

Production Process ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Environmental Indicators ◽

Special Focus ◽

Oil Supply

Olive oil is one of the most globally recognized high-value products, with 4 million hectares cultivated in the Mediterranean area. The production process involves many stages: farming, extraction, packing, and waste treatment. Each one of these stages should present critical points for the environmental impacts, and for this reason, the entire sector is adopting mitigation strategies to begin to be more sustainable. The mitigation actions’ efficiency should be evaluated through environmental indicators or environmental impact assessment by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This review aimed to carry out an overview of recent papers (2011–2021) involving an LCA study in the olive oil supply chain by giving a framework of what is included in LCA studies and highlighting the main contributors to environmental impacts. The main scholarly literature databases have been exploited, highlighting a great increase in publications, especially from the producer countries. The review results reflect the heterogeneity of the production process. However, the use of pesticides, fertilizers, water, and fuel for machinery heavily weigh on the farming stage’s environmental impact. Finally, special focus was given to key elements of LCA studies in the olive oil supply chain, such as functional unit, system boundaries, impact categories, calculation method, and software widely used.

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Methodology for the quantification of concrete sustainability

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201817401006 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 174 ◽

pp. 01006 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Břetislav Teplý ◽

Tomáš Vymazal ◽

Pavla Rovnaníková

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Service Life ◽

Circular Economy ◽

Point Of View ◽

Raw Material ◽

Load Bearing Capacity ◽

Sustainability Management

Efficient sustainability management requires the use of tools which allow material, technological and construction variants to be quantified, measured or compared. These tools can be used as a powerful marketing aid and as support for the transition to “circular economy”. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedures are also used, aside from other approaches. LCA is a method that evaluates the life cycle of a structure from the point of view of its impact on the environment. Consideration is given also to energy and raw material costs, as well as to environmental impact throughout the life cycle - e.g. due to emissions. The paper focuses on the quantification of sustainability connected with the use of various types of concrete with regard to their resistance to degradation. Sustainability coefficients are determined using information regarding service life and "eco-costs". The aim is to propose a suitable methodology which can simplify decision-making in the design and choice of concrete mixes from a wider perspective, i.e. not only with regard to load-bearing capacity or durability.

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Analysis of the Characteristics of Environmental Impacts According to the Cut-Off Criteria Applicable to the Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) of Apartment Buildings in South Korea

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052898 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2898

Author(s):

Rakhyun Kim ◽

Myung-Kwan Lim ◽

Seungjun Roh ◽

Won-Jun Park

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Impact Analysis ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Environmental Impact Analysis ◽

Apartment Buildings ◽

Environmental Impact Categories ◽

Weight Percentile

This study analyzed the characteristics of the environmental impacts of apartment buildings, a typical housing type in South Korea, as part of a research project supporting the streamlined life cycle assessment (S-LCA) of buildings within the G-SEED (Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design) framework. Three recently built apartment building complexes were chosen as study objects for the quantitative evaluation of the buildings in terms of their embodied environmental impacts (global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, and abiotic depletion potential), using the LCA approach. Additionally, we analyzed the emission trends according to the cut-off criteria of the six environmental impact categories by performing an S-LCA with cut-off criteria 90–99% of the cumulative weight percentile. Consequently, we were able to present the cut-off criterion best suited for S-LCA and analyze the effect of the cut-off criteria on the environmental impact analysis results. A comprehensive environmental impact analysis of the characteristics of the six environmental impact categories revealed that the error rate was below 5% when the cut-off criterion of 97.5% of the cumulative weight percentile was applied, thus verifying its validity as the optimal cut-off criterion for S-LCA.

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Der Umsatz-Nachhaltigkeitsindex*/The Turnover-Sustainability-Index

wt Werkstattstechnik online ◽

10.37544/1436-4980-2016-03-40 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 106 (03) ◽

pp. 136-140

Author(s):

R. Miehe ◽

M. Wiedenmann ◽

T. Prof. Bauernhansl

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Sustainability Index ◽

Behavior Based ◽

Comparative Examination

Die Ökobilanz hat sich als Instrument zur Bewertung der Umweltauswirkungen von Produkten und Prozessen durchgesetzt. Dennoch stellt ihre Durchführung Nutzer immer wieder vor Herausforderungen. Der Fachartikel präsentiert einen Ansatz für eine vergleichende Betrachtung der ökologischen Auswirkungen des unternehmerischen Handelns auf Basis der jeweiligen Unternehmens- und Branchenumsätze. Der Umsatz-Nachhaltigkeitsindex soll als Konzept für ein Benchmark für Unternehmen einer Branche dienen.   Life Cycle Assessment has prevailed as an instrument to evaluate the environmental impact of products and processes. Its execution, however, poses a challenge to operators. In this paper, we present an approach for a comparative examination of environmental impacts of industrial behavior based on the turnover of companies and their equivalent sectors. The Turnover-Sustainability-Index serves as a benchmark for companies within a sector.

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Reuse of Barley Straw for Handmade Paper Production

10.20944/preprints202103.0307.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alma Delia Delia Román Gutiérrez ◽

Juan Hernandez Avila ◽

Antonia Karina Vargas M. ◽

Eduardo Cerecedo Saenz ◽

Eleazar Salinas-Rodríguez

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Waste Treatment ◽

Raw Material ◽

Barley Straw ◽

Handmade Paper ◽

Organic Solid Waste ◽

Organic Solid ◽

Spent Grain

Usually in the manufacture of beer by fermentation of barley, in both industrialized and developing countries significant amounts of organic solid waste are produced from barley straw. These possibly have an impact on the carbon footprint with an effect on global warming. According to this, it is important to reduce environmental impact of these solid residues, and an adequate way is the recycling using them as raw material for the elaboration of handmade paper. Therefore, it is required to manage this type of waste by analyzing the environmental impact, and thus be able to identify sustainable practices for the treatment of this food waste, evaluating its life cycle, which is a useful methodology to estimate said environmental impacts. It is because of this work shows the main results obtained using the life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology, to evaluate the possible environmental impacts during the waste treatment of a brewery located in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. The residues evaluated were barley straw, malt residues and spent grain, and at the end, barley straw was selected to determine in detail its environmental impact and its reuse, the sheets analyzed presented a grammage that varies from 66 g/m2 and 143 g/m2, resistance to burst was 117 to 145 kpa, with a crystallinity of 34.4% to 37.1%.

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Environmental Impact for 3D Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds Life Cycle: An Assessment

Biointerface Research in Applied Chemistry ◽

10.33263/briac125.65046515 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (5) ◽

pp. 6504-6515

Keyword(s):

Tissue Engineering ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Bone Tissue Engineering ◽

Bone Tissue ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Tissue Engineering Scaffolds ◽

Industrial Soil ◽

The Impact

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds have evolved. Bone tissue engineering is one of the techniques for repairing bone abnormalities caused by a variety of circumstances, such as injuries or the need to support damaged sections. Many bits of research have gone towards developing 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds all across the world. The assessment of the environmental impact, on the other hand, has received less attention. As a result, the focus of this study is on developing a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds and evaluating potential environmental impacts. One of the methodologies to evaluating a complete environmental impact assessment is life cycle assessment (LCA). The cradle-to-grave method will be used in this study, and GaBi software was used to create the analysis for this study. Previous research on 3D bone tissue engineering fabrication employing poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) soaked in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and diphenyl (2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl) phosphine oxide (TPO) as a photoinitiator will be reviewed. Meanwhile, digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing is employed as the production technique. The GaBi program and the LCA model developed to highlight the potential environmental impact. This study shows how the input and output of LCA of 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds might contribute to environmental issues such as air, freshwater, saltwater, and industrial soil emissions. The emission contributing to potential environmental impacts comes from life cycle input, electricity and transportation consumption, manufacturing process, and material resources. The results from this research can be used as an indicator for the researcher to take the impact of the development of 3D bone tissue engineering on the environment seriously.

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Life cycle assessment of organic Parmesan Cheese considering the whole dairy supply chain

Proceedings of the 5th International Food Operations & Processing Simulation Workshop ◽

10.46354/i3m.2019.foodops.004 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Giulia Borghesi ◽

Giuseppe Vignali

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Supply Chain ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Carbon Footprint ◽

Water Consumption ◽

Organic Agriculture ◽

Water Footprint ◽

Dairy Farm ◽

Parmesan Cheese

Agriculture and food manufacturing have a considerable effect on the environment emissions: holdings and farms play an important role about greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption. This study aims at evaluating the environmental impact of one of the most important Italian DOP product: organic Parmesan Cheese. Environmental performances of the whole dairy supply chain have been assessed according to the life cycle assessment approach (LCA). In this analysis Parmesan Cheese is made from an organic dairy farm in Emilia Romagna, which uses the milk from three different organic livestock productions. Organic agriculture is different from conventional; the major difference is represented by the avoidance of the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides made in chemical industry process. Organic agriculture uses organic fertilizers to encourage the natural fertility of the soil respecting the environment and the agro-system. In this case, life cycle approach is used to assess the carbon footprint and the water footprint of organic Parmesan Cheese considering the milk and cheese production. The object at this level is investigating the environmental impact considering the situation before some improvement changes. The functional unit is represented by 1 kg of organic Parmesan Cheese; inventory data refer to the situation in year 2017 and system boundaries consider the inputs related to the cattle and dairy farm until the ripening (included). The carbon footprint is investigated using IPCC 2013 Global Warming Potential (GWP) 100a method, developed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and reported in kg of CO2eq. Otherwise, water footprint allows to measure the water consumption and in this work it is assessed using AWARE method (Available Water REmaining).

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Environmental impacts of roundwood supply chain options in Michigan: life-cycle assessment of harvest and transport stages

Journal of Cleaner Production ◽

10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.04.040 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 76 ◽

pp. 64-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 40

Author(s):

Robert M. Handler ◽

David R. Shonnard ◽

Pasi Lautala ◽

Dalia Abbas ◽

Ajit Srivastava

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Supply Chain ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts

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Life Cycle Assessment of Dietary Patterns in the United States: A Full Food Supply Chain Perspective

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12041586 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 1586 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Daesoo Kim ◽

Ranjan Parajuli ◽

Gregory J. Thoma

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Supply Chain ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Food Consumption ◽

The United States ◽

Vegetarian Diet ◽

Dietary Guidelines ◽

Consumption Patterns ◽

Consumption Pattern

A tiered hybrid input–output-based life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to analyze potential environmental impacts associated with current US food consumption patterns and the recommended USDA food consumption patterns. The greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) in the current consumption pattern (CFP 2547 kcal) and the USDA recommended food consumption pattern (RFP 2000 kcal) were 8.80 and 9.61 tons CO2-eq per household per year, respectively. Unlike adopting a vegetarian diet (i.e., RFP 2000 kcal veg or RFP 2600 kcal veg), adoption of a RFP 2000 kcal diet has a probability of increasing GHGEs and other environmental impacts under iso-caloric analysis. The bigger environmental impacts of non-vegetarian RFP scenarios were largely attributable to supply chain activities and food losses at retail and consumer levels. However, the RFP 2000 vegetarian diet showed a significant reduction in the environmental impacts (e.g., GHGEs were 22% lower than CFP 2547). Uncertainty analysis confirmed that the RFP 2600 scenario (mean of 11.2; range 10.3–12.4 tons CO2-eq per household per year) is higher than CFP 2547 (mean of 8.81; range 7.89–9.95 tons CO2-eq per household per year) with 95% confidence. The outcomes highlight the importance of incorporating environmental sustainability into dietary guidelines through the entire life cycle of the food system with a full accounting of the effects of food loss/waste.

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