Product environmental footprint in policy and market decisions: Applicability and impact assessment

In April 2013, the European Commission published the Product and Organisation Environmental Footprint (PEF/OEF) methodology—a life cycle‐based multicriteria measure of the environmental performance of products, services, and organizations. With its approach of “comparability over flexibility,” the PEF/OEF methodology aims at harmonizing existing methods, while decreasing the flexibility provided by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards regarding methodological choices. Currently, a 3‐y pilot phase is running, aiming at testing the methodology and developing product category and organization sector rules (PEFCR/OEFSR). Although a harmonized method is in theory a good idea, the PEF/OEF methodology presents challenges, including a risk of confusion and limitations in applicability to practice. The paper discusses the main differences between the PEF and ISO methodologies and highlights challenges regarding PEF applicability, with a focus on impact assessment. Some methodological aspects of the PEF and PEFCR Guides are found to contradict the ISO 14044 (2006) and ISO 14025 (2006). Others, such as prohibition of inventory cutoffs, are impractical. The evaluation of the impact assessment methods proposed in the PEF/OEF Guide showed that the predefined methods for water consumption, land use, and abiotic resources are not adequate because of modeling artefacts, missing inventory data, or incomplete characterization factors. However, the methods for global warming and ozone depletion perform very well. The results of this study are relevant for the PEF (and OEF) pilot phase, which aims at testing the PEF (OEF) methodology (and potentially adapting it) as well as addressing challenges and coping with them. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2015;11:417–424

Screening indicators for the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

Since children are the key stakeholders supporting and being affected by sustainable development, the framework for the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) was proposed. It addresses social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development by considering seven relevant themes of child development, i.e., health, education, safety, economic status, relationship, environmental aspects and participation. However, an indicator set for initiating the SCDI is still missing. In this study, indicators for the themes, subthemes and criteria of SCDI are identified from literature and then analyzed regarding data availability. Sixty-six indicators with statistical data covering at least 100 countries are selected as the indicator set for the SCDI. The results indicate that data availability is best for indicators describing the themes of health and education, and worst for indicators addressing the themes of relationship and participation. Furthermore, 21 subthemes and 50 criteria described by indicators with limited data availability are identified for future indicator and data development. By providing an initial indicator set and screening the indicators with regard to data availability, the practicality of the SCDI framework is expected. Furthermore, the indicator set can serve as a potential indicator pool for other child and sustainable development related studies.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

Environmental Impacts of a Pet Dog: An LCA Case Study

The number of pet animals in the European Union is increasing over the last decades. Few studies with a limited focus in terms of impacts and life cycle stages exist that assess the environmental impacts of dogs. This paper addresses the entire life cycle of a dog. An LCA study on an average dog was conducted considering the pet food and dog excrements, i.e., urine and feces. Fifteen impact categories were analyzed. An average dog has a climate change and freshwater eutrophication potential of around 8200 kg CO2eq and 5.0 kg Peq., respectively. The main contribution to most impact categories over the dog’s life is caused by pet food. Freshwater eutrophication is mainly determined by the dog´s urine and feces. Feces also have a significant contribution to the category of freshwater ecotoxicity. Impacts increase significantly with increasing weight and a longer lifetime of the dog as well as low collection rates of the feces. This LCA study reveals that pet dogs can have a significant environmental impact, e.g., around 7% of the annual climate change impact of an average EU citizen. Optimizing pet food and increasing the feces´ collection rate can reduce the impacts.DFG, 414044773, Open Access Publizieren 2019 - 2020 / Technische Universität Berli

Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Pilot Phase—Comparability over Flexibility?

The main goal of the European product environmental footprint (PEF) method is to increase comparability of environmental impacts of products within certain product categories by decreasing flexibility and therefore achieving reproducibility of results. Comparability is supposed to be further increased by developing product category specific rules (PEFCRs). The aim of this paper is to evaluate if the main goal of the PEF method has been achieved. This is done by a comprehensive analysis of the PEF guide, the current PEFCR guide, the developed PEFCRs, as well as the insights gained from participating in the pilot phase. The analysis reveals that the PEF method as well as its implementation in PEFCRs are not able to guarantee fair comparability due to shortcomings related to the (1) definition of product performance; (2) definition of the product category; (3) definition and determination of the representative product; (4) modeling of electricity; (5) requirements for the use of secondary data; (6) circular footprint formula; (7) life cycle impact assessment methods; and (8) approach to prioritize impact categories. For some of these shortcomings, recommendations for improvement are provided. This paper demonstrates that the PEF method has to be further improved to guarantee fair comparability.UBA, 3712 95 337, Environmental Footprint of Products and Service

Improving sustainability by technology assessment and systems analysis: the case of IWRM Indonesia

To support the implementation of the IWRM-Indonesia process in a water scarce and sanitation poor region of Central Java (Indonesia), sustainability assessments of several technology options of water supply and sanitation were carried out based on the conceptual framework of the integrative sustainability concept of the German Helmholtz association. In the case of water supply, the assessment was based on the life-cycle analysis and life-cycle-costing approach. In the sanitation sector, the focus was set on developing an analytical tool to improve planning procedures in the area of investigation, which can be applied in general to developing and newly emerging countries. Because sanitation systems in particular can be regarded as socio-technical systems, their permanent operability is closely related to cultural or religious preferences which influence acceptability. Therefore, the design of the tool and the assessment of sanitation technologies took into account the views of relevant stakeholders. The key results of the analyses are presented in this article

The Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) for countries

Despite the relevance of children in inheriting and shaping society, an index assessing sustainable development with a focus on children is missing. To tackle this gap, this study established the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) by considering child development topics in the context of inter-generational equity and applying indicators with available statistical data on country level. The SCDI at present addresses health, education, safety, economic status and environmental aspects described by 25 indicators. By taking reference points derived from the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the SCDI scores for the year 2015 were calculated for 138 countries and then classified into four sustainable child development levels (very high, high, medium and low). The results showed great regional inequality on the status of sustainable child development. European countries generally have better status of sustainable child development. By contrast, 90% of African and 76% of Asian countries were classified as countries with medium and low levels. Moreover, the comparison of the SCDI, the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Child Development Index (CDI) based on correlation analysis and 10-year (2006–2015) country rankings demonstrated that the SCDI can complement existing development indices to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of sustainable development.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

Application options of the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) – assessing the status of sustainable development and establishing social impact pathways

The needs of children and their vulnerability to diseases, violence and poverty are different from those of adults. The Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) was thus developed in previous work to evaluate the status of sustainable development for countries with a focus on children and triple-bottom-line thinking. This study proposes application options to put the SCDI into practice. The SCDI can be performed similarly to existing development indices, for comparing and tracing the performance of sustainable development on different geographic levels and between population groups. In addition, the SCDI can be integrated into existing social sustainability assessment approaches (e.g., Social Life Cycle Assessment and Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment) and databases (e.g., The Social Hotspots Database) to take children into account and enhance impact assessment of social sustainability assessment approaches. As an exemplification, this study demonstrates the application of the SCDI framework to support the development of social impact pathways. Due to the importance of tertiary education in reducing poverty, a preliminary social impact pathway addressing completion of tertiary education was established. By putting the SCDI into practice, the SCDI can support decision making in child as well as sustainable development policies.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

Life cycle sustainability assessment approaches for manufacturing

Sustainability assessments considering the three dimensions environment, economy, and society are needed to evaluate manufacturing processes and products with regard to their sustainability performance. This chapter focuses on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), which considers all three sustainability dimensions by combining the three methods life cycle assessmentLCA, life cycle costingLCC, and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). Existing LCSA approaches as well as selected ongoing work are introduced, both regarding the individual approaches as well as the combined LCSA approach. This includes, for instance, the Tiered Approach. This approach facilitates the implementation of LCSA, for instance, within the manufacturing sector, by providing a category hierarchy and guiding practitioners through the various impact and cost categories proposed for the three methods. Furthermore, ongoing developments in LCC and SLCA are presented, such as the definition of first economic and social impact pathways (linking fair wage and level of education to social damage levels) for addressing the current challenges of missing impact pathways for economic and social aspects. In addition, the Sustainability Safeguard Star suggests a new scheme for addressing the inter-linkages between the three sustainability dimensions. These approaches foster the application and implementation of LCSA and thus contribute to developing sustainable processes and products

Benchmarking and environmental performance classes in life cycle assessment—development of a procedure for non-leather shoes in the context of the Product Environmental Footprint

Purpose: In the process of developing Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR)—currently tested in various pilots in the Single Market for Green Products initiative of the European Commission—the definition of product category benchmarks and environmental performance classes is a crucial element of each PEFCR. Whilst life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology developed over the last 20 years can be used for many other topics to be tackled in the pilots, there is a clear lack of methodology for the determination of benchmarks and environmental performance classes. In this article, hence, we address this gap and develop a procedure for benchmarking and environmental performance classes in LCA. Methods: To do this, given requirements and definitions of the PEF guidelines on both subjects are taken as a basis and are refined by using common LCA techniques like hot spot and sensitivity analyses. The specific steps of the procedure are applied systematically in a case study using sports shoes as an example. Results and discussion: The resulting procedure involves the definition of a scenario vector, which is composed of relevant life cycle phases as well as the lifetime of the product (i.e. sports shoes) as variables. On the basis of the hot spot and sensitivity analyses, these variables are quantified, first, to generate the benchmark and, second, to determine the environmental performance classes around the benchmark for each considered impact category individually. In addition, the influence of data uncertainty on the class distribution is assessed with the help of the Monte Carlo simulation. Conclusions: The results of the application in the case study demonstrate the high impact of the product’s lifetime on the final environmental performance classes, and the importance of data quality. Limitations are identified regarding data availability and the harmonisation of the classes to potentially create a PEF label. A debate is induced on the validity of such a label when considering the fact that the characterisation methods and factors proposed in the PEF guidelines may not be complete or accurate enough