LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) of roses and cyclamens in greenhouse cultivation

The flower market of the Terlizzi agro-industrial district (Bari, Italy) represents the 20% of the Italian production, which is the second in Europe after the Netherlands. The main products are cut flowers and plants in vase, in particular roses and cyclamens. In this framework the European Project "Ecoflower Terlizzi" was carried out to support the implementation of a sustainable environmental policy in the Terlizzi district. The project was aimed at defining the criteria of environmental quality of the flowers produced in this area and includes both the definition of an EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) programme and of a local eco-label (type I). To reach this objective environmental analyses and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) studies were carried out on a sample of seven enterprises representative of the Terlizzi's production systems. They were analysed on the basis of on-site data collection including materials and components for structures and equipments, energy and water consumption, fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals used in the cultivation phase. Three farms produce roses with soilless cultivation systems, two produce roses in soil and two produce cyclamens' pots. In this paper the main issues concerning the application of the LCA methodology to the production of roses and cyclamens and the results obtained will be presented. Thermal energy consumption gives the main contribution to the environmental impacts of the roses' life cycle. For the cyclamens' pots the main contribution comes from the seedlings production. For both productions, electricity consumption, structures and equipments give a significant contribution to the environmental impacts

LCA of integrated MSW management systems: Case study of the Bologna District

LCA as a decision-supporting tool in planning integrated municipal solid waste management is not yet widely used in Italy. This paper presents a study concerning the application of the LCA methodology to support the development of the new waste management plan for the Bologna District. The main goal of the study was to show decision-makers at political level the benefits obtainable with the use of LCA, in terms of the identification and quantification of the potential environmental impacts of different waste management strategies. The integrated waste management system of the Bologna District includes waste collection and transport, sorting, recycling, composting, incineration and land-filling. Three scenarios, referring to 2006 and foreshadow the presence of 950,000 inhabitants and the production of ~566,000 tonnes of waste in the District, have been compared. A detailed model has been developed in order to capture effects related to the waste fraction from separated collection and to the different waste treatments. The discussion of the results has focussed in particular on the greenhouse effect and the acidification potential. On the basis of the results obtained, the analysis of an additional scenario characterised by a further increase in separated collection has been put forward

Combined approach of Risk Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment for the environmental evaluations: an overview

The environmental evaluations of processes and technology, especially the emerging ones, need a very detailed analysis and often the correct way to perform it is to use different tools to obtain the best results. The aim of this paper is to describe the roles and information from the methodologies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) to find possible alternative ways for combining them, using studies from literature. There are many advantages with an integrated approach but there are also difficulties and limits due to their different characteristics, conceptual model and purposes