Life cycle assessment of bottom ash management from a municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI)

Thermal treatment of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) results in various types of solid wastes, distinguishing mainly bottom, boiler and fly ashes and slag. To minimise waste generation it necessary to carry out primary measures for controlling residue outputs that involve optimising control of the combustion process. Obviously, after primary measures a secondary treatment is required. The conventional bottom ash management is to carry out a solidification process. This solidification or stabilization process produces a material with physical and mechanical properties that promote a reduction in contaminant release from the residue matrix. Solidification methods commonly make use of inorganic binder reagents such as cement, lime and other pozzolanic materials. Once waste is stabilized, it is usually sent to the landfill. However, despite the heavy metal content, it is getting more and more common the use of this waste as a natural aggregate. In particular, it could be used as a raw material for clinker production, cement mortar or frit production. Other possible management options included its utilization as a drainage layer on a landfill and as a sub-base material in a road construction. In this work it was assessed different bottom ash management options. In this work the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to assess the environmental impact of different bottom ash management options. Specifically, the conventional ash solidification was compared with the ash recycling in Portland cement production

A case study for environmental impact assessment in the process industry: municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI)

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been introduced in the evaluation of chemical processes and or products in order to take into account the Supply Chain and its environmental constraints and burdens. Regarding to the environmental assessment of chemical processes and/or products two main variables need to be taken into account: Natural Resources Sustainability (NRS) and Environmental Burdens Sustainability (EBS). NRS includes the use of energy, water and materials whereas EBS is given by the environmental sustainability metrics developed by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The main components of EBS have been classified in 5 environmental impacts to the atmosphere (acidification, global warming, human health effects, stratospheric ozone depletion and photochemical ozone formation), 5 aquatic media impacts (aquatic acidification, aquatic oxygen demand, ecotoxicity (metals), ecotoxicity (others) and eutrophication) and 2 land impacts (hazardous and non-hazardous waste disposal). To reduce the number of variables and thus, the complexity, the development of a normalisation and weighting procedure is required. This work proposes the normalization of EB based on the threshold values of the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) and a similar procedure based on the values given by the BREF document on waste incineration for the NRS normalisation. This procedure will help in the decision making process in the waste management field and in the particular, in Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI)

Superfoods: A super impact on health and the environment?

Given the current trend in superfoods consumption and the forecasts for their growth in the coming years, this article provides an overview of the three sustainability dimensions of the novel market, addressing consumers´ perception from a social and economic perspective, and focusing on their environmental performance. The review highlights the need for regulation and provision of well-designed information for consumers, among whom are segments that currently mistrust their health claims, which are mainly the motivating reason for consumption. On the other hand, the carbon footprint of superfoods production is similar to that of other conventional agri-foods, although distribution from the countries of origin and future changes to intensive and commercially-oriented production systems to meet demand could endanger this column of sustainability.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the KAIROS-BIOCIR project (PID2019-104925RB) (AEO/FEDER, UE). Ana Fernández-Ríos thanks the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spanish Government for their financial support via the research fellowship RE2020-094029

Towards sustainable dietary patterns under a water-energy-food nexus life cycle thinking approach

The big challenge of the next decades is meeting the global nutritional demand, while reducing the pressure on food resources and the GHG emissions. In this regard, the overall goal consists of redesigning the food systems and promoting sustainable dietary patterns is a crucial aspect. This article focuses on reviewing the state-of-the-art of the combined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus approach in assessing the effects of diet transitions. Diet LCAs differ in methodology, design, and assessed environmental impacts. The WEF nexus, which aims at finding synergies and trade-offs between the water, energy, and food resources systems, has been applied to different contexts and levels. However, a limited number of nexus methods have been developed at the food and diet levels, and no commonly recognizable methodology for the nexus assessment has been achieved. An integrated LCA and WEF Nexus approach can be a decisive tool to improve the understanding of the interconnections in the nexus, as it enables the consideration of entire supply chains.This study is part of the Ceres-Procon Project: Food production and consumption strategies for climate change mitigation (CTM2016-76176-C2-2-R) (AEI/FEDER, UE), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, which aims to determine strategies to improve the sustainability of current food production and consumption

Product vs corporate carbon footprint: A case study for the spirit drinks sectors

The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a common mechanism to evaluate and report the environmental performance of services and products due to its holistic approach and for its standardised method which guaranteeing reproducibility. There is a huge ongoing effort to improve and promote the use of LCA in Europe, by means of the Single Market of Green Products Initiative, which promotes the use of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF). Although LCA has been applied in a great variety of industries, there is an even higher worldwide trend of simplification focussing on a single indicator, carbon footprint (CF), relevant to global warming, which is internationally considered as a critical environmental concern. The scope of the CF assessment could be corporate (when all production processes of a company are evaluated) or product (when one of the products is evaluated throughout its life cycle). However, sometimes product CF studies collect corporate data, since for most companies it is easier to report global annual consumptions and emissions instead of the product's specific inputs and outputs. In this framework, this study aims to apply and compare the product and corporate CF methodologies to the case study of the spirit drinks sector in Cantabria (Northern Spain). In particular, to a SME dedicated to the artisanal elaboration of premium spirit drinks such as gin and vodka. The value obtained of the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) was 0.57 kg CO2 eq. for a bottle (70 cl) of classic gin whereas the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) presented a value of 4.58×103 kg CO2 eq. for Scope 2 and 5.58×104 kg CO2 eq. for Scope 3 in the year 2017. The results indicated that significant environmental impacts were caused during the production of the glass bottle as well as the production of the electricity required in the beverage company

When life cycle thinking is necessary for decision making: emerging cleaner technologies in the chlor-alkali industry

The chlor-alkali industry sector produces chlorine, sodium/potassium hydroxide and hydrogen by the electrolysis of brine. Nowadays, three different electrolysis techniques are applied: mercury, diaphragm, and membrane cell technology. From all these technologies, the European Commission labels the membrane process as the Best Available Technique (BAT) for the chlor-alkali industry. The membrane cell technology has fewer exhausts to the environment and it is relatively more efficient in the use of electric power that mercury and diaphragm. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the overall energy intensity has been reduced, the issue of energy consumption is still a major matter. A promising approach for reducing the electricity demand of chlor-alkali electrolysis is using oxygen-depolarised cathodes (ODC). ODCs are long known and have been successfully used in chlorine production through electrolysis of hydrogen chloride (HCl). The achieved environmental benefit of this technique is a reduction of energy consumption. However, the overall reduction of energy consumption is lower, as some energy is required to produce pure oxygen and because hydrogen is not co-produced, which could otherwise be used in chemical reactions or to produce steam and electricity via combustion or fuel cells. In this sense, the reduced electricity demand does not necessarily imply cleaner chlorine production. For that reason, this work proposes the use of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to determine the environmental performance of the existing electrolysis technologies and to compare it with the ODC technique

Revisiting the LCA+DEA method in fishing fleets. How should we be measuring efficiency?

Life Cycle Assessment and Data Envelopment Analysis have been repeatedly combined in the literature as LCA+DEA method with the aim of enhancing the utility of life-cycle based methods in order to account for eco-efficiency verification and environmental impactminimization. Despite its evolution through time, it lacks specific standards that norm the combination of the two methods. In this sense, this study noted that its development has evolved in the frame of mainstream cultural perspectives to measure environmental impacts (i.e., hierarchist approaches). Therefore, the main objective of the study is to compare the benchmarking results obtained through DEA computation using different Cultural Theoryapproaches to calculate environmental impacts. For this, a case study for the Cantabrian purse seining fishing fleet was chosen. Hence, three different DEA matrices were constructed attending to the three main human visions on environmental issues: hierarchist, individualist and egalitarian. All three matrices represented the same set of inputs to be optimized, but differed in the nature of the output flow, representing landed fish, energy content or biomass removal. Results suggest that optimization of environmental impacts is strongly influenced by the cultural perspective selected. In the particular case of fishing fleets, benchmarking environmental impacts based on anthropocentric views may be ignoring the health of fishing stocks and the trophic complexity of the ecosystems. Methodological conclusions are directed towards the need to define more flexible and holistic frameworks in LCA+DEA modelling with the aim of enrichening the set of predetermined assumptions, including the Cultural Theory, to avoid biased interpretations.The authors thank the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government for their financial support via the project GeSAC-Conserva: Sustainable Management of the Cantabrian Anchovies (CTM2013-43539-R) and Yago Lorenzo-Toja, Sara González-García and Lucía Lijó for valuable scientific exchange. Jara Laso thanks the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spanish Government for their financial support through the research fellowship BES-2014-069368 and the Ministry of Rural Environment, Fisheries and Food of Cantabria for support with data collection. Reviewers are also thanked for the valuable and detailed suggestions

Best available techniques in municipal solid waste incineration: state of the art in Spain and Portugal

In the year 2010 more than 24 Mt and 5 Mt of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) were generated in Spain and Portugal. Landfilling, incineration and recycling are the most common treatments. In 2010, in the Iberian Peninsula between 58-6 2 % of the MSW generated was sent to the landfill, 9-19 % was incinerated and the rest was recycled and composting (EUROSTAT, 2010). Despite landfilling is still the most common practice, waste treatment by means of an incineration process has increased. The main advantages of this type of waste treatment are the reduction of mass and volume of residues and the energy recovery. Nevertheless, incineration had gained a bad reputation owing to the environmental impact, in particular, due to the emissions of acid gases, dioxins and furans (PCDD/F) and greenhouse gases. To assess the environmental advantages and disadvantages as well as the potential environmental impacts of waste incineration a life cycle perspective is required. Within this framework is the development of FENIX-Giving Packaging a New Life, a 3-year European LIFE+ funded project. This work is just the first step within this project where a database and a model based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of waste incineration in Spain and Portugal will be developed. Particularly, the aim of this paper is to review the different technologies applied to MSW solid waste incineration and to carry out both the diagnosis of the current situation at the incineration plants in Spain and Portugal and to collect data to develop the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)

The fishing and seafood sector in the time of COVID-19: Considerations for local and global opportunities and responses

This paper provides an overview of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fishing sector over the world, including several economic, social, environmental, and health challenges that the fisheries have had to face during the early days of the health crisis and some of them still continue today. These problems, in short, are translated into a decrease in seafood demand, loss of jobs, changes in food consumption habits, economic losses or increased vulnerability of the industry. As consequence, governments have been forced to implement regulations and measures in support of this sector. However, a positive aspect of the pandemic also stands out; the opportunity to transform the food system to be greener, more inclusive, and resilient against future shocks.This work was supported by the EAPA_576/2018 NEPTUNUS project. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of Interreg Atlantic Are

Energy systems in the food supply chain and in the food loss and waste valorization processes: a systematic review

ABSTRACT: The intensity in energy consumption due to food production systems represents a major issue in a context of natural resources depletion and an increasing worldwide population. In this framework, at least a third of global food production is being lost or wasted. Moreover, about 38% of the energy embedded in total food production is being lost. Consequently, the assessment of energy consumption in food systems, and in food loss and waste valorization systems, is an increasing trend in recent years. In this line, this work presents a systematic review, selecting 74 articles from a search of 16,930 papers regarding the key words "energy assessment food". The aim was to determine the current and historical trends in this field of research. Results pointed to a worldwide acceleration in trends since 2014, standing out in China and other Asian countries. Concerning the topics of the publications, energy consumption in the food sector is a research field which has existed since 1979. Moreover, the study of energy valorization systems using food loss and waste is an increasing trend since 2010. Additionally, publications focused on the water-energy-food nexus appeared firstly in 2014 and have grown exponentially. Moreover, life cycle assessment highlights as the most widespread methodology used.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the KAIROS-BIOCIR project (PID2019-104925RB) (AEO/FEDER, UE)