Are Cradle to Cradle certified products environmentally preferable? Analysis from an LCA approach

The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification has gained popularity amongst companies as a way to distinguish more environmentally friendly products. This article analyzes the C2C certification by determining how successful this eco-labeling scheme is in distinguishing environmentally preferable products in order to probe if the certification informs correctly to the consumer about the environmental performance of products. Furthermore, we identify for which product types the C2C certification really results in environmental impact reduction. First a review is done in order to detect the debilities, if any, of C2C. Secondly, the fact that C2C requirements do not tackle environmental aspects of products from a life cycle approach, and concentrates exclusively on raw materials and end of life phases, is further analyzed in depth. To do so, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) already published results for different product categories are used to determine if the life-cycle stages considered under the C2C approach coincide with the most relevant stages in terms of life-cycle environmental impacts. This helps ascertain if and when C2C can be considered an appropriate ecolabel.It is concluded that for products with high-energy consumption during use, C2C does not guarantee relevant environmental improvements, since it does not account for a substantial part of the product's environmental impact. For these reasons, we argue that C2C is not always an appropriate scheme to distinguish environmentally preferable products

Ecodisseny urbà a la ciutat de Barcelona

El disseny de ciutats sostenibles es perfila com la millor solució per fer front als problemes ambientals globals que ha creat la nostra societat. Per fer-ho, calen noves perspectives i instruments amb els quals millorar el disseny i la planificació urbanístics. Ateses les circumstàncies, l'ecodisseny sorgeix com una de les eines essencials per avançar vers unes ciutats més sostenibles. En aquest article presentem tres estudis de cas d'aplicació de l'ecodisseny a Barcelona: un fanal, un punt verd de barri i un barri sencer

Urban ecodesign in the city of Barcelona

Article publicat a la versió anglesa de la revista, que també té versions en català i castellà.Designing sustainable cities seems to be the best solution for facing the global environmental problems that our society has created. With this aim, new approaches and tools for improved urban design and planning are necessary. In this context, ecodesign presents itself as one of the key tools in the move towards more sustainable cities. This article presents three case studies of how it has been applied in Barcelona: a street light; a waste collection point and an entire neighbourhood

Life cycle assessment of energy flow and packaging use in food purchasing

The aim of this project is to obtain quantitative data on the metabolic flows (energy consumption, not only by the establishment but also in the transportation of workers and customers, and packaging use) and their resulting environmental impacts of a standard shopping basket purchase in five city center municipal markets and a hypermarket in a suburban retail park in the province of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The main results show that a standard shopping basket purchased in a retail park requires 20 times more energy than one purchased in a municipal market (11.1 kWh and 0.57 kWh, respectively). Customer transportation represents 83.2% of energy consumption in a retail park, while the greatest impacts in a municipal market stem from the establishment itself (49.5%) and worker transportation (40.4%). Secondly, the packaging use inventory is higher in a hypermarket (253 g) than in a municipal market (102 g). However, the overall environmental impact associated with a standard shopping basket is 10 times higher on average in a hypermarket than in a municipal market, and the carbon footprints of the hypermarket and the municipal market are 3.8 and 0.4 kg of CO₂ eq., respectively. According to the sensitivity analysis, current policies for reducing the amount of plastic bag packaging have little repercussion in a retail park because its relative weight in terms of total packaging use is only 7%. Nevertheless, they have notable effects in municipal markets where plastic bags represent 25% of the packaging use. Finally, if customers selected the least packaged products available in hypermarkets, each shopping basket could reduce up to 47.2% of its used packaging weight and between 15.4 and 59.0% of its associated environmental impact

Eco-innovative practices for sustainable consumption and production: what are the possible benefits for companies ?

The paper aims to present some eco-innovative practices regarding Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). The study also focuses on potential benefits for the actors who implement these practices, mainly with reference to companies. After a literature review on the actual importance of SCP and on the effects of eco-innovation tools and policies on companies, authors present the developed eco-innovation practices in three focus areas related to sustainable consumption and production. The aim of the study is to contribute to literature studies on SCP with the development of eco-innovative practices resulting by the integration of existing tools, by pointing out and valorizing their potentials and synergies. These practices have been pointing out in the framework of the international European project. Three focus areas are involved by the practices: sustainability of products and services, sustainability of production processes and sustainable management of industrial areas. Authors developed four eco innovative practices resulting from the integration of 15 existing tools. These practices offer many opportunities to many actors, mainly companies and public authorities, in order to achieve environmental and competitive benefits and implement eco-innovation principles with a cooperative and shared approach

Environmental assessment of drinking water transport and distribution network use phase for small to medium-sized municipalities in Spain

Previous studies assessing the environmental impacts of drinking water supply networks have considered a bottom-up approach, analysing single case studies. This paper presents a top-down approach for the assessment of the operational phase of a water supply network. A representative sample of 50 cities was statistically analysed to find relations between different variables regarding electricity and water consumption linked with the environmental impacts of the network. The results show that some of the variables are clearly related to the relative energy consumption of the network. Such is the case for population size, where small municipalities have up to 14 times higher relative electricity consumption compared with medium-sized municipalities (1.15E-2 as opposed to 8.3E-4 kWh/m³ registered water km of network) due to case-specific factors such as a strong gradient between a water tank and the consumption point. Similarly, the cases showing low population density exhibit 7 times higher relative electricity consumption because of the longer distances that must be covered and the correlation between population density and size. The values found for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived from the energy consumption are consistent with results from previous studies: on average, 5.53 kg of CO₂ eq. emissions/inhabitant·year are released, but the variability is very high, ranging from 0.005 to 67.8 kg of CO₂ eq. emissions/inhabitant·year. No clearly significant correlations were found between the relative water demand and variables such as seasonality or income per capita, which might indicate that water consumption depends on individual decisions of the population rather than on the variables assessed. Models for the estimation of water demand, length of network and electricity consumption were defined. However, the modelling of electricity consumption presented more difficulties because of its high variability. A protocol for data collection should be defined and implemented in the future to enable the analysis of more high quality case studies and for the definition of more accurate and reliable models

Working on strategies towards urban sustainability

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Are Cradle to Cradle certified products environmentally preferable? Analysis from an LCA approach

The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification has gained popularity amongst companies as a way to distinguish more environmentally friendly products. This article analyzes the C2C certification by determining how successful this eco-labeling scheme is in distinguishing environmentally preferable products in order to probe if the certification informs correctly to the consumer about the environmental performance of products. Furthermore, we identify for which product types the C2C certification really results in environmental impact reduction. First a review is done in order to detect the debilities, if any, of C2C. Secondly, the fact that C2C requirements do not tackle environmental aspects of products from a life cycle approach, and concentrates exclusively on raw materials and end of life phases, is further analyzed in depth. To do so, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) already published results for different product categories are used to determine if the life-cycle stages considered under the C2C approach coincide with the most relevant stages in terms of life-cycle environmental impacts. This helps ascertain if and when C2C can be considered an appropriate ecolabel.It is concluded that for products with high-energy consumption during use, C2C does not guarantee relevant environmental improvements, since it does not account for a substantial part of the product's environmental impact. For these reasons, we argue that C2C is not always an appropriate scheme to distinguish environmentally preferable products

Working on strategies towards urban sustainability

Vegeu rfgresum1de1.pd

Ecodisseny urbà a la ciutat de Barcelona

El disseny de ciutats sostenibles es perfila com la millor solució per fer front als problemes ambientals globals que ha creat la nostra societat. Per fer-ho, calen noves perspectives i instruments amb els quals millorar el disseny i la planificació urbanístics. Ateses les circumstàncies, l'ecodisseny sorgeix com una de les eines essencials per avançar vers unes ciutats més sostenibles. En aquest article presentem tres estudis de cas d'aplicació de l'ecodisseny a Barcelona: un fanal, un punt verd de barri i un barri sencer