scholarly journals Analysis of Major Environmental Impact Categories of Road Construction Materials

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6951
Author(s):  
Won-Jun Park ◽  
Rakhyun Kim ◽  
Seungjun Roh ◽  
Hoki Ban
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Road Construction ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Toxicity Potential ◽  
Road Projects ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Impact

To address the environmental problems associated with construction materials, the construction industry has made considerable efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, construction materials cause several other environmental problems in addition to carbon emissions and thus, a comprehensive analysis of environmental impact categories is required. This study aims to determine the major environmental impact categories for each construction material in production stage using the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique on road projects. Through the review of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies, the abiotic depletion potential (ADP), ozone depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, eco-toxicity potential, human toxicity potential, as well as the global warming potential (GWP) were defined as impact categories. To define the impact categories for road construction materials, major environmental pollutants were analyzed for a number of road projects, and impact categories for 13 major construction materials were selected as mandatory impact categories. These materials contributed more than 80% to the impact categories from an LCA perspective. The impact categories to which each material contributed more than 99% were proposed as specialization impact categories to provide basic data for use in the LCIA of future road projects.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of an Office Building Based on Site-Specific Data

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 2588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ylmén ◽  
Diego Peñaloza ◽  
Kristina Mjörnell
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Office Building ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Impact

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an established method to assess the various environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a building. The goal of this project was to calculate the environmental releases for a whole office building and investigate the contribution in terms of environmental impact for different parts of the building, as well as the impact from different stages of the life cycle. The construction process was followed up during production and the contractors provided real-time data on the input required in terms of building products, transport, machinery, energy use, etc. The results are presented for five environmental impact categories and, as expected, materials that constitute the main mass of the building and the energy used during operation contribute the largest share of environmental impact. It is usually difficult to evaluate the environmental impact of the materials in technical installations due to the lack of data. However, in this study, the data were provided by the contractors directly involved in the construction and can, therefore, be considered highly reliable. The results show that materials for installations have a significant environmental impact for four of the environmental impact categories studied, which is a noteworthy finding.

scholarly journals Sustainable Wine Scoring System (SWSS): A life cycle assessment (LCA) multivariable approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 03016 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.E. Valero ◽  
J.A. Howarter ◽  
J.W. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Ozone Depletion ◽  
Scoring System ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Reference Region ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Impact

Sustainable practices have become accepted by a large part of the wine community as a necessary step to face climate change challenges and natural resources depletion. Also, in recent years, there is a rising influence of sustainability on consumer’s buying decision. However, buyers fail to distinguish sustainable attributes from wine that is promoted under different sustainability labels. Moreover, wineries find it challenging to quantify the improvement of their environmental impact when following a specific sustainable practice. The objective of this study is to evaluate the methodology for the development of a Sustainable Wine Scoring System (SWSS). The SWSS aims to be a single numeric index of the sustainable attribute of a bottle of wine, constituted by multiple normalized indicators. Our initial approach for the SWSS is to quantify different environmental impact categories following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to then normalizes and weighs the result regarding a reference region. We used as a case of study “Craft Wineries” in Indiana in the USA, as a non-traditional winemaking area. The impact assessment was conducted using SimaPro8.5 in accordance to TRACI2.1 for the USA. As result of our LCA, grape growing is the process that contributes the most to the ecotoxicity, non-carcinogenic, and eutrophication impact categories, while transportation stages contribute the most to global warming potential, smog, and ozone depletion. The calculated SWSS results vary from 279 for the scenario with the highest environmental impact to 350 for the best performance scenario. The SWSS has the potential to represent sustainable attributes of wine in a more suitable way than a single isolated indicator such as carbon footprint.

scholarly journals 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

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.

scholarly journals A Building Life-Cycle Embodied Performance Index—The Relationship between Embodied Energy, Embodied Carbon and Environmental Impact

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Hu
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Building Performance ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Embodied Carbon ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
Building Life Cycle

Knowledge and research tying the environmental impact and embodied energy together is a largely unexplored area in the building industry. The aim of this study is to investigate the practicality of using the ratio between embodied energy and embodied carbon to measure the building’s impact. This study is based on life-cycle assessment and proposes a new measure: life-cycle embodied performance (LCEP), in order to evaluate building performance. In this project, eight buildings located in the same climate zone with similar construction types are studied to test the proposed method. For each case, the embodied energy intensities and embodied carbon coefficients are calculated, and four environmental impact categories are quantified. The following observations can be drawn from the findings: (a) the ozone depletion potential could be used as an indicator to predict the value of LCEP; (b) the use of embodied energy and embodied carbon independently from each other could lead to incomplete assessments; and (c) the exterior wall system is a common significant factor influencing embodied energy and embodied carbon. The results lead to several conclusions: firstly, the proposed LCEP ratio, between embodied energy and embodied carbon, can serve as a genuine indicator of embodied performance. Secondly, environmental impact categories are not dependent on embodied energy, nor embodied carbon. Rather, they are proportional to LCEP. Lastly, among the different building materials studied, metal and concrete express the highest contribution towards embodied energy and embodied carbon.

Assessing the environmental impact of the dairy processing industry in the Republic of Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Finnegan ◽  
Jamie Goggins ◽  
Xinmin Zhan
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Cumulative Energy ◽  
Republic Of Ireland ◽  
Eutrophication Potential ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Republic

This Research Communication describes the methodology used and the subsequent results obtained for an assessment of the environmental impact associated with the manufacture of dairy products in the Republic of Ireland. As the Irish dairy industry changes and grows, it is necessary to have a benchmark of the environmental performance of the sector if it is to remain sustainable in the future. In order to estimate the environmental impact, life cycle assessment has been implemented, which has been structured in accordance with the International Organisation for Standardisation guidelines. In this study, the environmental impact categories assessed are terrestrial acidification potential, cumulative energy demand, freshwater eutrophication potential, global warming potential, marine eutrophication potential and water depletion. The main Irish dairy products have been compared across these environmental impact categories in order to derive meaningful results. It is identified that packaging materials, particularly for infant formula, and energy usage, across each of the life cycle stages, should be targeted as these are the most significant contributors to the overall environmental impact.

scholarly journals Environmental Impact of Edible Flower Production: A Case Study

Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 579
Author(s):  
Nicole Mélanie Falla ◽  
Simone Contu ◽  
Sonia Demasi ◽  
Matteo Caser ◽  
Valentina Scariot
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Percentage Increase ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Potted Plants ◽  
Productive Process ◽  
Acidification Potential ◽  
The Impact

Nowadays the heightened awareness of the critical trend in resource depletion impels to improve the eco − sustainability of any productive process. The research presented in this paper aims to quantify the environmental impact of the emerging productive process of edible flowers, focusing on two model species, i.e., Begonia x semperflorens − cultorum hort and Viola cornuta L., and two types of product, i.e., flowering potted plants sold in plastic vases and packaged flowers ready to be consumed. The study was carried out in an Italian nursery located in Tuscany, interviewing the owners in order to complete the Life Cycle Inventory, assessing the value of the impact categories, and using the “cradle to gate” approach. The information about the production of flowering potted plants and packaged flowers were inserted in a database and elaborated by the appropriate software. The results of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis referred to 1 g of fresh edible flowers and were expressed in four impact categories. Global Warming Potential (GWP) values ranged from 24.94 to 31.25 g CO2 eq/g flowers, Acidification Potential (AP) ranged from 8.169E − 02 to 1.249E − 01 g SO2 eq/g flowers, Eutrophication Potential (EP) ranged from 3.961E − 02 to 5.284E − 02 g PO43 − eq/g flowers, and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) ranged from 8.998E − 03 to 1.134E − 02 g C2H4 eq/g flowers. Begonias showed lower emissions than violas in the GWP and POCP indexes, whereas violas showed lower values in the AP and EP impact categories. The most impactful phase was the propagation, accounting on average for 42% of the total emissions. Overall, the findings highlighted a higher environmental load for the production of both begonias and violas packaged flowers, especially if in small containers, rather than as potted plants, with an emission percentage increase from 8% to 17% among the impact categories.

scholarly journals Sustainability Estimation of Oat:Pea Intercrops from the Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment Perspective

Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2433
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Bernas ◽  
Tereza Bernasová ◽  
Hans-Peter Kaul ◽  
Helmut Wagentristl ◽  
Gerhard Moitzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Farming System ◽  
N Fertilization ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Yield Level ◽  
N Yield ◽  
Arable Farming ◽  
The Impact

Winter cereal:legume intercropping is considered a sustainable arable farming system not only in temperate regions but also in Mediterranean environments. Previous studies have shown that with suitable crop stand composition, high grain yield can be achieved. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the influence of sowing ratio and nitrogen (N) fertilization on grain nitrogen yield of oat (Avena sativa L.) and pea (Pisum sativum L.) in intercrops was performed to find the optimal design to achieve low environmental impact. This study compared the environmental impact of oat:pea intercrops using agricultural LCA. Monocrops of oat and pea and substitutive intercrops, which were fertilized with different levels of N, were compared. The system boundaries included all the processes from cradle to farm gate. Mass-based (grain N yield) and area-based (land demand for generating the same grain N yield) functional units were used. The results covered the impact categories related to the agricultural LCAs. The ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint and Endpoint characterization model was used for the data expression. According to the results, an unfertilized combination of oat and pea (50%:50%) had the lowest environmental impact in comparison with the other 14 assessed variants and selected impact categories. In the assessed framework, pea monocrops or intensively fertilized oat monocrops can also be considered as alternatives with relatively low impact on the environment. However, an appropriate grain N yield must be reached to balance the environmental impact resulting from the fertilizer inputs. The production and use of fertilizers had the greatest impact on the environment within the impact categories climate change, eutrophication, and ecotoxicity. The results indicated that high fertilizer inputs did not necessarily cause the highest environmental impact. In this respect, the achieved grain N yield level, the choice of allocation approach, the functional unit, and the data expression approach played dominant roles.

scholarly journals ANÁLISE DE DUPLICAÇÃO DO TRECHO RODOVIÁRIO DA BR-101/RJ

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (208) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Camila Nascimento Mello
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Road Construction ◽  
Water Runoff ◽  
The Road ◽  
Car Exhaust ◽  
Road Projects ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Road System

Brazil is in a situation of marked degradation in the road system, both in the sense of lacking new road projects and needing repairs to its current infrastructure. It is known that with the demographic increase over the years several positive and negative environmental impacts were caused and that the highways are works that generate great environmental impact. An environmental impact is defined as any change caused to the environment by humans, in turn the negative leads to an ecological imbalance, causing serious damage to the environment. In addition to the great polluting effects of the gases released by car exhaust, there is also the impact of road construction, which implies the withdrawal and transfer of huge amounts of land, deforestation, changes in the form of water runoff, silting of rivers and associated urban expansion. The purpose of this article is to analyze the fundamentals that support the concept, understand the challenges posed and the level of adequacy that reveal the need for legitimacy of the article.

scholarly journals The impact of the consumer’s decision on the life cycle assessment of organic pasta

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Elisabeth Gnielka ◽  
Christof Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Grocery Store ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Freshwater Ecotoxicity ◽  
Last Mile ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Freshwater Eutrophication

AbstractEvery consumer’s decision has an impact on the environment, and even basic food products such as pasta have an impact due to their high consumption rates. Factors that can be influenced by the consumer include the preparation (cooking), last mile and packaging phases. The last mile has not been considered in most studies but contributes considerably to the environmental impact of pasta. The three phases and their environmental impact on the life cycle of pasta are analyzed in this cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment. The focus of the study lies on the impact categories climate change, agricultural land occupation, fossil depletion, water depletion, freshwater eutrophication and freshwater ecotoxicity. Inventory data were taken from other studies, were collected in cooperation with a zero-packaging organic grocery store in Germany or were gained in test series. Our results show that the preparation of pasta has the greatest environmental impact (over 40% in the impact categories climate change and fossil depletion and over 50% in the impact category freshwater eutrophication), followed by the last mile (over 20% in the impact categories climate change and fossil depletion) and lastly the packaging (nearly 9% in the impact categories freshwater eutrophication and freshwater ecotoxicity). Based on our study´s results, we provide some recommendations for minimizing the environmental impacts of pasta.

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