Exploring the direction on the environmental and business performance relationship at the firm level. Lessons from a literature review

The interest of scientists and companies in understanding the business implications of environmental investment is timely; however, a dilemma remains at the firm level: is the environment a “strategic competitive factor”, as in the “Porter point of view”, or is it a “luxury good”, as in the “Wagner point of view”? Our research contributes to this debate through a review of the papers published in scientific journals between 2000 and 2015 that discussed the direction of the relationship between the environmental and business performances of enterprises. The objectives of the research are: (a) to verify if there is an agreement in the scientific literature of the last 15 years about the “Porter–Wagner dilemma” when focusing at the firm level; (b) to underline the prevalent cause and effect directions of the relationship between environmental and business performance; and (c) to investigate the reasons for any disagreements in this topic among the scientists. The results show that the main agreement regards the positive bi-directional relationship, as a virtuous cyclic approach with mutual effects between business and environmental performance; nevertheless, more complex hypotheses emerge, such as nonlinear and/or conditional relationship, that need to be further explored. On the other hand, the Porter–Wagner dilemma remains, and the main reason for the non-agreement among scientists can be due to the several non-homogeneous variables considered in the analyses. Thereafter, as lesson for scientists, the priority is to share univocal methods to measure firms’ environmental and business performances

Consequential life cycle assessment of kraft lignin recovery with chemical recycling

: The recovery of kraft lignin from black liquor allows an increasing of the pulp production of a kraft mill (marginal tonnage) and at the same time provide a valuable material that can be used as energy or chemical feedstock. However, because lignin precipitation is an energy- and material-consuming process, the environmental consequences from a life cycle perspective are under discourse. The aim of this study is to investigate, through the application of consequential life cycle assessment, the potential environmental benefits of kraft lignin recovery and its subsequent use as an energy or chemical feedstock. A newly developed chemical recovery strategy was assessed. The results revealed how the use of lignin as energy feedstock is not environmentally advantageous compared to producing energy directly from the pulp mill's recovery boiler. However, the best results were observed when lignin was used as a chemical feedstock in four applications to replace bitumen, carbon black, phenol, and bisphenol-A

NEW MODEL TO ACHIEVE THE WATER MANAGEMENT AS A COMPETITIVE TOOL FOR INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES

The issue of freshwater use and related impacts is central to international debate. The reason is that freshwater, even though renewable, is a scarce resource with limited availability in a growing number of regions all over the world. The consequent increasing competitiveness on freshwater resources is recognized to affect companies by exposing them to several environmental and market risks. In this contest, businesses clearly showed interest in freshwater management tool so that, in recent year, the scientific community has been working on the development of suitable models and methods. Even though several experiences can be identified in the literature, most significant researches are taking place within the framework of the Life Cycle Assessment, an internationally accepted methodology to assess potential environmental impacts of products, processes and organizations. When focusing on freshwater related issue it is also known as Water Footprint assessment. Current methods, specifically developed to address this issue, present limits in term of transparency, completeness and comprehensiveness. These limitations prevent companies to understand their water environmental hot-spots and therefore to set effective environmental and market performance improvement strategies. The present research focuses on the development of a new model to achieve the freshwater management as a competitive tool for industrial processes. To do so the specific objective of the research was to develop a set of indicators to overcome identified limits and to test its applicability in real case studies. To define the set of indicators, the methodology of the research took into consideration the Life Cycle Assessment framework adopting the criteria agreed within the UNEP-SETAC (United Nation Environmental Program – Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) Water Use Life Cycle Initiative; to test and discuss its applicability and effectiveness, the methodology of the multiple case studies was adopted. The case studies were selected considering their significance in term of freshwater scarcity and their capability to represent life cycle processes in different locations and therefore to address the issue of regionalization. The four products studied in this research were: a water collection system, an organic oat beverage, an organic strawberry jam and a tomato sauce. The development of the set of indicators is addressed in the first part of the research. To guarantee transparency and effective life cycle impact assessment analysis, the entire environmental impact chain was modelled in order to separately address consumptive and degradative freshwater use. To guarantee completeness and comprehensiveness and therefore to avoid potential environmental burden shifting, a so called water footprint profile covering accepted freshwater related impact methods, was created. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed set of indicators is presented in the second part of this work. The four case studies were conducted according to the Life Cycle Assessment stages. Results of the applicability of the proposed set of indicators highlighted the importance of regionalization and comprehensiveness and allowed to understand the importance of considering degradative and consumptive freshwater use separately. It was in fact possible to define environmental impact reduction strategies in each of the case studies presented. The research activities were carried out at the Department of Industrial Engineering (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale-DII) at the University of Padova (Italy) and at the Golisano Institute for Sustainability of the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York State –USA). The results of the research activities are summarized in 5 chapters. Chapter 1 includes an introduction of the issue of freshwater scarcity and presents the evolution of models to address freshwater use and related impacts starting from the virtual water assessment to the most recent development within the Life Cycle Assessment framework. Limits of current models and methods are presented. Objective and structure of the research are also described. Chapter 2 reports on materials and methods used in the present research, from the description of the general framework of Life Cycle Assessment studies to the specific criteria used in the indicators definition. Set of developed indicators is therefore presented by specifying procedures for their application and describing the solutions adopted to conform to internationally accepted requirements (such as ISO 14046). Chapter 3 presents the results of the application of the identified set of indicators in four different case studies. To identify potential strategies for companies and to test the effectiveness of the proposed set of indicators, a sensitivity analysis on results is performed. Chapter 4 presents the discussion on results with reference to published literature, the UNEP-SETAC Water Use Life Cycle Initiative criteria, the ISO 14046 principles and objectives of the research. Chapter 5 reports on the conclusion and perspectives for future research

Life Cycle Assessment of Pvc-a Polymer Alloy Pipes for the Impacts Reduction in the Construction Sector

The plastics and construction sectors are at the heart of European policies for the circular economy. Polyvinylchloride (PVC) is the most used polymer in construction products and one of the major applications is piping systems for water distribution. The PVC-A polymer alloy is made blending PVC with chlorinated polyethylene and it is characterized by improved physical properties that allow a reduction in pipe\u2019s thickness. These characteristics enable a reduction in the consumption of resources, but a comprehensive analysis of environmental performance is needed to identify any trade-offs. The aim of this work is to apply Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate two PVC-A piping systems with different gaskets. The study was conducted according to the EN 15804 standard and primary data from an industrial-scale production process were used. An extensive comparison with the main alternatives on the market (PVC-U, PVC-O, PVC-M, and PE) is reported, both referred to 1 kg and 1 meter of pipe

Simplified direct water footprint model to support urban water management

Water resources conservation corresponding to urban growth is an increasing challenge for European policy makers. Water footprint (WF) is one of the methods to address this challenge. The objective of this study was to develop a simplified model to assess the WF of direct domestic and non-domestic water use within an urban area and to demonstrate its effectiveness in supporting new urban water management strategies and solutions. The new model was tested on three Central European urban areas with different characteristics i.e., Wroclaw (Poland), Innsbruck (Austria), and Vicenza (Italy). Obtained WFs varied from 291 dm3/(day∙capita) in Wroclaw, 551 dm3/(day∙capita) in Vicezna to 714 dm3/(day∙capita) in Innsbruck. In addition, WF obtained with the proposed model for the city of Vicenza was compared with a more complex approach. The results proved the model to be robust in providing reasonable results using a small amount of data

Organizational Life Cycle Assessment: The Introduction of the Production Allocation Burden

none5noneManzardo, Alessandro; Loss, Andrea; Niero, Monia; Vianello, Chiara; Scipioni, Antonio*Manzardo, Alessandro; Loss, Andrea; Niero, Monia; Vianello, Chiara; Scipioni, Antoni

Emergy Analysis and Sustainability Efficiency Analysis of Different Crop-Based Biodiesel in Life Cycle Perspective

Biodiesel as a promising alternative energy resource has been a hot spot in chemical engineering nowadays, but there is also an argument about the sustainability of biodiesel. In order to analyze the sustainability of biodiesel production systems and select the most sustainable scenario, various kinds of crop-based biodiesel including soybean-, rapeseed-, sunflower-, jatropha-and palmbased biodiesel production options are studied by emergy analysis; soybean-based scenario is recognized as the most sustainable scenario that should be chosen for further study in China. DEA method is used to evaluate the sustainability efficiencies of these options, and the biodiesel production systems based on soybean, sunflower, and palm are considered as DEA efficient, whereas rapeseed-based and jatropha-based scenarios are needed to be improved, and the improved methods have also been specified

On the reporting and review requirements of ISO 14044

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Globalization, Financial Depth, and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

ISSN:0948-3349ISSN:1614-750

Mainstreaming life cycle thinking through a consistent approach to footprints

Over recent years, footprints have emerged as an important means of reporting environmental performance. Some individual footprints have become quite sophisticated in their calculation procedures. However, as an overallclass of environmental metrics they have been poorly defined, having a variety of conceptual foundations and an unclear relationship to LCA. The variety and sometimes contradictory approaches to quantification have also led to confusing and contradictory messages in the marketplace which have undermined their acceptance by industry and governments.In response, a task force operating under the auspices of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative project on environmental Life Cycle Impact Assessment has been working to develop generic guidance for developers of footprint metrics. The initial work involved forming a consensual position on the difference between footprints and existing LCA impact category indicators. In short, footprints are deemed to have a primary orientation toward society and nontechnical stakeholders and report only on selected topics of concern. On the other hand, LCA impact category indicators have a primary orientation toward technical stakeholders and report in relation to a larger framework designed for comprehensive evaluation of environmental performance and trade-offs. The task force has also developed a universal footprint definition. In parallel to Area of Protection, we introduce Area of Concern. In the same way that LCA uses impact category indicators to assess impacts that follow a common cause-effect pathway toward Areas of rotection, ootprint metrics address Areas of Concern. The critical difference is that Areas of Concern are defined by the interests of stakeholders in society rather than the LCA community. In addition, Areas of Concern are stand-alone and not part of a framework intended for comprehensive environmental performance assessment. Accordingly, footprints are universally defined as metrics used to report life cycle assessment results addressing an Area of Concern