An application of hybrid life cycle assessment as a decision support framework for green supply chains

In an effort to achieve sustainable operations, green supply chain management has become an important area for firms to concentrate on due to its inherent involvement with all the processes that provide foundations to successful business. Modelling methodologies of product supply chain environmental assessment are usually guided by the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). However, a review of the extant literature suggests that LCA techniques suffer from a wide range of limitations that prevent a wider application in real-world contexts; hence, they need to be incorporated within decision support frameworks to aid environmental sustainability strategies. Thus, this paper contributes in understanding and overcoming the dichotomy between LCA model development and the emerging practical implementation to inform carbon emissions mitigation strategies within supply chains. Therefore, the paper provides both theoretical insights and a practical application to inform the process of adopting a decision support framework based on a LCA methodology in a real-world scenario. The supply chain of a product from the steel industry is considered to evaluate its environmental impact and carbon ‘hotspots’. The study helps understanding how operational strategies geared towards environmental sustainability can be informed using knowledge and information generated from supply chain environmental assessments, and for highlighting inherent challenges in this process

EU Ecolabel for food and feed products – feasibility study

The environmental impacts of the production and processing of food, feed and drinks make up between 20% and 30% of the total environmental impacts of consumable goods in the EU. In the case of eutrophication (the accumulation of nutrients in water causing a reduction in oxygen availability) they account for as much as 58% of the total impacts. The EU Ecolabel is a voluntary scheme that forms part of overall EU policy to encourage more sustainable consumption and production. To date, the EU Ecolabel scheme has developed criteria for products in the non-food sector. The Regulation that governs the scheme (66/2010) aims to extend the EU Ecolabel into new product categories including food. However, the Regulation stipulates that before extending to the food sector, a feasibility study should be undertaken

The evaluation of national accounting matrices with environmental accounts (NAMEA) as a methodology for carrying out a sustainability assessment of the Scottish food and drink sector

This report introduces environmental input-output (IO) accounts for Scotland as an example of a NAMEA framework. It provides an introduction to the use of basic IO multiplier methodology, which can be applied to examine pollution/waste generation and/or resource use under production and consumption accounting principles

Risk Assessment for Natural-Hazard Impact on Hazardous Chemical Installations: Workshop Outcome Report

The impact of natural hazards on hazardous installations can cause major chemical accidents. This so-called “Natech” risk is increasing due to industrialisation and climate change. Capacity building in EU Member States, Candidate Countries and EU Neighbourhood Countries on Natech risk required for Natech risk reduction. This report summarises the findings of a training workshop on risk assessment for natural-hazard impact on hazardous chemical installations which the JRC organised in the frame of the JRC's Enlargement & Integration Action Programme in March 2016. It gives an overview of the presented materials and summarises the Natech risk management situation in new EU Member States, Candidate Countries and Neighbourhood countries.JRC.E.2-Technology Innovation in Securit

Mechanised shea butter production in south-western Nigeria using Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) approach from gate-to-gate

Agriculture and food processing, industry are among the largest industrial sectors that uses large amount of energy. Thus, a larger amount of gases from their fuel combustion technologies are being released into the environment. The study was therefore designed to assess each unit production processes in order to identify hotspots using life cycle assessments (LCA) approach in South-western Nigeria. Data such as machine power rating, operations duration, inputs and outputs of shea butter materials for unit processes obtained at site were used to modelled Life Cycle Impact Analysis (LCIA) on GaBi6 (Holistic Balancing) software.  Four scenarios were drawn for the impact assessments. Material sourcing from Kaiama, Scenarios 1, 3 and Minna Scenarios 2, 4 but different heat supply sources (Liquefied Petroleum Gas ‘LPG’ Scenarios 1, 2 and 10.8 kW Diesel Heater, scenarios 3, 4). Modelling of shea butter production on GaBi6 was for 1kg functional unit of shea butter produced and the tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) midpoint assessment was tool used to analyse the life cycle inventories of the four scenarios. Eight categories in all four Scenarios were observed, out of which two impact categories; Global Warming Potential (GWP) (0.613, 0.751, 0.661, 0.799) kg CO2­-Equiv., and Acidification Potential (AP) (0.112, 0.132, 0.129, 0.149) kg H+ moles-Equiv., had the greater impacts on the environment in Scenarios 1-4 respectively. Impacts from transportation activities were also seen to contribute more to these environmental impact categories due to large volume of petrol combusted leading to releases of gases such as CO2, CH4, N2O, SO2, and NOx into the environment during the transportation of raw shea kernel purchased. The ratio of transportation distance from Minna and Kaiama to production site was approximately 3.5. Shea butter unit processes with greater impacts in all categories was the packaging, milling and with the churning processes in ascending order of magnitude was identified as hotspots that may require attention. From the 1kg shea butter functional unit, it was inferred that locating production site at the shortest travelling distance to raw material sourcing and combustion of LPG for heating would reduce all the impact categories assessed in the environment

Life Cycle Assessment of Emerging Technologies

The environmental impacts of emerging technologies are conventionally identified, regulated, and mitigated only after large-scale deployment. As a result, a considerable number of emerging technologies eventually develop into non-optimized systems, which translate into waste of resources and capitals, and hence reduced competitiveness. Therefore, it is paramount to assess emerging technologies during the nascent stages of their development and expand the conventional set of metrics of the assessment, thus enabling unbiased decisions on the deployment of the technology and promoting sustainable innovation. The challenge is to ensure that the outcomes of the assessment are not compromised by the uncertainties existing at such early stages of technology development. Building on these premises, the Thesis lays the foundations for producing high-fidelity and timely projections of environmental impacts and costs of emerging technologies, presenting an overarching framework for prospective assessments, and testing it on four emerging technologies originating from both academic and industrial R&D, at different stages of their process development: 1) production of formate using CO2 captured from the tail gases of power plants; 2) milli-continuous-flow production of gold nanoparticles for healthcare applications; 3) continuous-flow production of Rufinamide, an anticonvulsant drug; 4) intensified continuous-flow production of zeolite A. The results of the LCA of emerging technologies demonstrate that is possible to provide live and timely feedback to technology developers and identify intervention points and potential solutions for the optimization of the technology since the early stages. Furthermore, the proposed assessment allows to benchmark the performances of the system under analysis against the standard industrial practice, hence quantifying the benefits that would stem from the adoption of innovative production technologies in place of conventional ones. On the whole, LCA of emerging technologies offers an opportunity to structure the collaboration between different actors involved in process innovation. The ultimate goal of this approach is to lay the bases for debating and guiding research and development, and to provide a solid platform to discuss with all necessary stakeholders involved in the deployment of the technology, thus promoting sustainable technology innovation

Strategic design of environmentally and socially sustainable supply networks

The five published articles of this cumulative dissertation deal with the design of supply networks on a strategic level and with a special focus on the operationalization of environmental and social indicators − addressing 16 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on, inter alia, case studies on Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) as well as lignocellulosic, second-generation bioethanol production in the EU, this work provides best-practice approaches on how to integrate results from applied Industrial Ecology methods (LCA, S-LCA) into Operations Research models (here: multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming). Beside methodological contributions, the dissertation provides insights for policy-makers, practitioners, and academia in terms of environmental, social, and economic benefits and risks of WEEE recovery and second-generation bioethanol production in the EU

Upgrading wineries to biorefineries within a Circular Economy perspective: An Italian case study

In the challenge of transforming waste into useful products that can be re-used in a circular perspective, Italian wine industry can represent a suitable model for the application of the bioeconomy principles, including the valorisation of the agricultural and food waste. In the present study, a comprehensive environmental assessment of the traditional production of wine was performed and the potentiality of a biorefinery system, based on winery waste and aimed at recovering useful bio-based products, such as grapeseed oil and calcium tartrate, was examined through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The wine company "I Borboni", producing Asprinio wine in the Campania Region (Italy), was proposed as a case study. The hotspots of the linear production system were identified and the bottling phase, in particular the production of packaging glass, resulted to contribute to the generation of impacts at 63%, on average, versus 14.3% of the agricultural phase and 22.7% of the vinification phase. The LCA results indicated human carcinogenic toxicity, freshwater eutrophication and fossil resource scarcity impact categories as the most affected ones, with normalized impacts amounting to 9.22E-03, 3.89E-04 and 2.64E-04, respectively. Two side production chains (grapeseed oil and tartrate production) were included and circular patterns were designed and introduced in the traditional production chain with the aim of valorising the winery residues and improving the overall environmental performance. By implementing the circular approach, environmental impacts in the global warming, freshwater eutrophication and mineral resource scarcity impact categories, in particular, resulted three times lower than in the linear system. The results achieved demonstrated that closing the loops in the wine industry, through the reuse of bio-based residues alternatively to fossil-based inputs within the production process, and integrating the traditional production system with new side production chains led to an upgrade of the wineries to biorefineries, towards more sustainable production patterns. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved