Strategies for decarbonizing printed circuit board supply chain.

The considerable environmental burden of textiles is currently globally recognized. This burden can be mitigated by applying circular economy (CE) strategies to the commonly linear, short garment life cycles that end with incineration or landfill disposal. Even though all CE strategies strive to promote environmental sustainability, they might not be equally beneficial. Environmental data on different textile products is insufficiently available, which leads to complications when assessing and deciding on different CE strategies to be implemented. This paper studies the environmental impacts of a polyester T-shirt's linear life cycle through life cycle assessment (LCA) and evaluates the benefits attainable by adopting different CE strategies, and their order of priority, while noting uncertainty arising from poor data quality or unavailability. The LCA is complemented by assessing health and environmental risks related to the different options. Most of the linear life cycle's LCA-based impacts arise from use-phase washing. Hence, it is possible to reduce the environmental impact notably (37 %) by reducing the washing frequency. Adopting a CE strategy in which the shirt is reused by a second consumer, to double the number of uses, enables an 18 % impact reduction. Repurposing recycled materials to produce the T-shirt and recycling the T-shirt material itself emerged as the least impactful CE strategies. From the risk perspective, reusing the garment is the most efficient way to reduce environmental and health risks while washing frequency has a very limited effect. Combining different CE strategies offers the greatest potential for reducing both environmental impacts as well as risks. Data gaps and assumptions related to the use phase cause the highest uncertainty in the LCA results. To gain the maximum environmental benefits of utilizing CE strategies on polyester garments, consumer actions, design solutions, and transparent data sharing are needed.

A core component of successful implementation of a circular economy (CE) strategy is the quantification of improvements or changes with respect to environmental impacts, resource usage, waste and/or economic costs. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a vital tool for the quantification and assessment of effectiveness and impacts associated with CE strategies. Incorporating LCA allows a comprehensive and transparent assessment of products, services or organizations, and can help to identify any potential unintended consequences associated with a change in process or practice. The implementation of LCA can appear complicated for non-practitioners, but there exist clear guidelines on how to conduct life cycle assessments, as described in this chapter. There are several frameworks for the incorporation of LCA into CE strategies, as described here, and LCA may play a key role in the development of meaningful indicators for CE with regards to the product level assessment. This chapter includes an assessment of the challenges associated with implementing LCA in CE, which include the difficulty in managing numerous indicators in parallel, and the lack of available data. Additionally, this chapter highlights the benefits associated with transparency, consistency, comparability and the system approach and its complementarities with the CE strategy.

Product carbon footprinting (PCF) is a method used to quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the life cycle of a product. This includes emissions from raw material extraction, production, distribution, use, and disposal. PCFs increasingly important for industries aiming to reduce their environmental impact and comply with regulatory requirements. It serves as a critical business indicator, influenced by life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies, and is essential for making informed decisions about sustainability practices. PCFs are crucial for meeting regulatory requirements, such as the EU’s Battery Passport Initiative, which mandates transparency in carbon footprint documentation for electric vehicle batteries starting in 2026 (Gutwald et al., 2024). Companies use PCFs to identify emission hotspots and implement reduction strategies, which can lead to significant reductions in emissions and provide a competitive edge in markets where sustainability is a purchasing criterion (Rüdele & Wolf, 2023)(Rüdele & Wolf, 2023). Organizations like BASF have developed ISO-conformant methodologies to calculate PCFs, aiming to provide maximum transparency to consumers and stakeholders (Paliwal, 2022). This goal of this paper is to present key issues with scaling of PCFs in the industry and identify opportunities where Large Language Models (LLMs) can help in order to scale PCFs to millions of products.

Circularity and life cycle environmental impact assessment of batteries for electric vehicles: Industrial challenges, best practices and research guidelines

Cleaning airless paint sprayer

The carbon footprint of a product represents the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released during its production, transportation, and consumption and is calculated as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq). It should be integrated into different existing and future seafood awareness campaigns to create more holistic yardsticks by which consumers, retail businesses, and producers can assess the environmental impacts of seafood. This study used the life cycle assessment (LCA) method for the first time to quantify the carbon footprint of salmon fillet products processed in Vietnam for export. The carbon footprint of 1-kg salmon fillet at the factory gate ranges between 7.20 and 15.05kg CO2-eq, depending on transportation modes of head-on-gutted (HOG) salmon from Norway to Vietnam. Transportatiton by airfreight doubled carbon footprint of salmon fillet products processed in Vietnam compared to sea freight. Feed and electricity were identified as the two most respective contributing factors during the stage of cultivation, processing fresh salmon in Norway, and the stage of salmon fillet processing in Vietnam. They accounted for about 95% and 50% of the total carbon footprint in these stages of the production chain, respectively. To reduce the carbon footprint of the salmon fillet products processed in Vietnam, the company should (i) make a careful production plan to use sea freight transportation instead of airfreight and (ii) use more electricity from renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the carbon footprint of these products can be reduced by improving the cultivation process via changing feed ingredients and enhancing the feed conversion ratio (FCR).

Under the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, together with 15 national ministries and commissions, has formulated the Implementation Plan on Establishing a Carbon Footprint Management System, and it is urgent for traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) pharmaceutical enterprises to carry out research on carbon footprint accounting methods of related products. Based on the life cycle assessment(LCA) theory, taking mulberry leaf extract produced by a certain enterprise as an example, this study analyzed the carbon footprint of TCM extracts during the life cycle. The results show that for every 1 kg of product produced, the carbon emissions from the stages of raw material acquisition, transportation, and extract production are-20.569, 1.205, and 173.577 kgCO_2eq(CO_2 equivalent), respectively. The carbon footprint of the product is 154.213 kgCO_2eq·kg~(-1). In addition, the carbon emission is the highest in the production stage, in which the consumption of ethanol solvents makes the greatest contribution to the carbon footprint, accounting for 25.71%, more than one-fourth of the total carbon footprint. The second contribution was from the treatment process of TCM residues, accounting for 19.67%, closely followed by wastewater treatment(17.71%), the consumption of hot steam(17.43%), and drinking water(16.90%). The consumption of electric power and packaging materials has a smaller carbon emission of 2.58%. In particular, the carbon emission caused by the consumption of packaging materials is only 0.04%, which is negligible. The results of the study are expected to provide a reference for TCM enterprises to carry out research on the carbon footprint of products, offer ideas for collaborative innovation in reducing pollution and carbon emissions throughout the entire industry chain of TCM, and develop new quality productivity of modern TCM industry based on green and low-carbon manufacturing.

The role of deep eutectic solvent recycling on crystalline nanocellulose production from oil palm empty fruit bunch: A techno-economic viability and life cycle assessment study

Among various industries, the construction sector has one of the greatest impacts on the environment. Minimizing the resource use and the waste outputs in this sector could be fulfilled by applying circular economy (CE) strategies. Although research on CE in the construction sector has increased in recent years, there have not been remarkable adjustments by applying these strategies to the construction industry. The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of using CE strategies in the construction sector. A framework was adapted to guide the application of different CE strategies at the end-of-life of buildings. The framework was assessed by a case study of a residential building in mass timber. This study evaluated the application of CE strategies from the environmental aspect with the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The results confirmed that circular strategies can deliver lower environmental impacts.

The body of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature is vast and has grown over the last decade at a dauntingly rapid rate. Many LCAs have been published on the same or very similar technologies or products, in some cases leading to hundreds of publications. One result is the impression among decision makers that LCAs are inconclusive, owing to perceived and real variability in published estimates of life cycle impacts. Despite the extensive available literature and policy need formore conclusive assessments, only modest attempts have been made to synthesize previous research. A significant challenge to doing so are differences in characteristics of the considered technologies and inconsistencies in methodological choices (e.g., system boundaries, coproduct allocation, and impact assessment methods) among the studies that hamper easy comparisons and related decision support. An emerging trend is meta-analysis of a set of results from LCAs, which has the potential to clarify the impacts of a particular technology, process, product, or material and produce more robust and policy-relevant results. Meta-analysis in this context is defined here as an analysis of a set of published LCA results to estimate a single or multiple impacts for a single technology or a technology category, either in a statisticalmore » sense (e.g., following the practice in the biomedical sciences) or by quantitative adjustment of the underlying studies to make them more methodologically consistent. One example of the latter approach was published in Science by Farrell and colleagues (2006) clarifying the net energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of ethanol, in which adjustments included the addition of coproduct credit, the addition and subtraction of processes within the system boundary, and a reconciliation of differences in the definition of net energy metrics. Such adjustments therefore provide an even playing field on which all studies can be considered and at the same time specify the conditions of the playing field itself. Understanding the conditions under which a meta-analysis was conducted is important for proper interpretation of both the magnitude and variability in results. This special supplemental issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology includes 12 high-quality metaanalyses and critical reviews of LCAs that advance understanding of the life cycle environmental impacts of different technologies, processes, products, and materials. Also published are three contributions on methodology and related discussions of the role of meta-analysis in LCA. The goal of this special supplemental issue is to contribute to the state of the science in LCA beyond the core practice of producing independent studies on specific products or technologies by highlighting the ability of meta-analysis of LCAs to advance understanding in areas of extensive existing literature. The inspiration for the issue came from a series of meta-analyses of life cycle GHG emissions from electricity generation technologies based on research from the LCA Harmonization Project of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, which also provided financial support for this special supplemental issue. (See the editorial from this special supplemental issue [Lifset 2012], which introduces this supplemental issue and discusses the origins, funding, peer review, and other aspects.) The first article on reporting considerations for meta-analyses/critical reviews for LCA is from Heath and Mann (2012), who describe the methods used and experience gained in NREL's LCA Harmonization Project, which produced six of the studies in this special supplemental issue. Their harmonization approach adapts key features of systematic review to identify and screen published LCAs followed by a meta-analytical procedure to adjust published estimates to ones based on a consistent set of methods and assumptions to allow interstudy comparisons and conclusions to be made. In a second study on methods, Zumsteg and colleagues (2012) propose a checklist for a standardized technique to assist in conducting and reporting systematic reviews of LCAs, including meta-analysis, that is based on a framework used in evidence-based medicine. Widespread use of such a checklist would facilitate planning successful reviews, improve the ability to identify systematic reviews in literature searches, ease the ability to update content in future reviews, and allow more transparency of methods to ease peer review and more appropriately generalize findings. Finally, Zamagni and colleagues (2012) propose an approach, inspired by a meta-analysis, for categorizing main methodological topics, reconciling diverging methodological developments, and identifying future research directions in LCA. Their procedure involves the carrying out of a literature review on articles selected according to predefined criteria.« less

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. 
\nThe 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.

Clothes play a main role in societies. They protect people from weather conditions and are important means of communication and expression. However, the clothing industry is at the center of increasing criticism because of its contribution to climate change, resource depletion, water pollution, and waste generation, among others. These impacts are closely linked to the fast-paced, massive consumption-oriented, and linear model in which clothes are produced, marketed, distributed, used, and disposed of. The Circular Economy (CE) concept emerged as an alternative to the mainstream linear scheme, which seeks to recycle wastes into resources, keep products, components, and materials at their highest level of utility and value for as long as possible, while designing out waste and pollution and regenerating natural systems. Despite some identified challenges, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is very well suited to analyze CE strategies and contribute to a better environmental performance of products and systems. In this context, this research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of LCA in supporting CE strategies for the clothing industry by conducting a systematic literature review. After analyzing 256 papers, the results show that LCA has been applied to assess the environmental impacts of clothing since 1997, while CE and clothing publications start to appear almost 20 years later. Despite the CE framework being newer than the LCA, the speed in which CE publications increase is significantly faster. There is a wide range of LCA studies applied to different clothing life cycle stages that could be used to inform CE strategies. A number of these studies were specifically developed to inform CE. Our review shows that CE researchers today are mostly evaluating stakeholder perceptions and consumer attitudes, influenced by a business model mindset. However, CE strategies require a conscious analysis to be proved efficient and claiming that currently promoted generic circular fashion strategies have better environmental performance than traditional strategies in any scenario would still be inexact. Therefore, further work in landing CE strategies through a closer relationship with science-based tools like LCA is needed.KeywordsLife cycle assessmentCircular economyClothingSustainabilityCircularityLiterature reviewEnvironmental assessment

Agriculture is the key for achieving the United Nations sustainable development goals: food security and climate action. To achieve these targets “climate-smart” agricultural practices need to be developed. Life cycle assessment and product carbon footprints are well established and internationally recognized tools to assist the process of improving environmental performance. However, there is room for methodological improvement of agricultural life cycle assessments and product carbon footprints. For agronomists, it is widely known that crop rotations and crop residues do fulfill important agronomic functions, but they are not adequately represented in current life cycle assessment and product carbon footprint modeling practice. New methods tested in this study allow the inclusion of crop rotation effects and crop residues as co-products, whilst keeping at the same time the product focus. Product carbon footprints are calculated with and without consideration of these effects; results are compared. If crop rotations are considered, wheat bread, cow milk, and rapeseed biodiesel have lower product carbon footprints (− 11, − 22, and − 16%, respectively). The product carbon footprint of straw bioethanol significantly increases (+ 80%) when considering straw as an agricultural co-product instead of as waste. Ignoring crop rotation effects underestimates the annual greenhouse gas savings of EU-28 rapeseed biodiesel by 1.67 million t CO2e and 20%, respectively. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that crop rotations and straw harvest should be considered for the product carbon footprints of bread, milk, and first- and second-generation biofuels. Since crop rotations and straw harvest are performed worldwide, the findings are relevant to all regions in the world. Comparing crop rotations and identifying climate-smart agricultural practices without losing the production orientation are key challenges for environmental assessments of agriculture in order to achieve the challenging combination of the food security and climate action sustainable development goals.

Bovine leather's environmental impacts have spurred the emergence of alternatives including synthetic polymers (polyurethane and polyvinyl chloride) and biobased and partially biobased materials from sources like cactus and fungi. As many of these materials are still in early technological development, they often lack a comprehensive environmental assessment that evaluates their advantages and drawbacks when compared to bovine leather. In this study, we compared the environmental performance of eight footwear materials using a hybrid methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative assessment, i.e., Lifecycle Screening of Emerging Technologies (LiSET) framework and comparative streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA results reveal that bovine leather has the highest environmental impacts, fossil-based alternatives have the lowest impact, and biobased or partially biobased alternatives score in the middle range. However, this conclusion applies within the cradle-to-gate system boundary and does not consider potential differences in product lifespan. In addition, the scoring is driven primarily by life-cycle energy use, favoring materials with low energy requirements and high technology readiness level (TRL), such as fossil-based materials. The LiSET matrix complements these findings by highlighting trade-offs, e.g., between environmental impacts and tear resistance (one aspect of durability), or between carbon emissions and the use of plastics. Nonetheless, the results remain sensitive to the allocation assumptions, differences in the TRL, and the exclusion of downstream impacts related to use and disposal. We show how this hybrid methodology combines the simplicity of LiSET with the rigor of LCA to provide more comprehensive and nuanced conclusions on the environmental performance of products. • A combination of life cycle screening and life cycle assessment was employed. • This hybrid method employed qualitative and quantitative data. • In the LCA, bovine leather showed the worst environmental performance. • Biobased materials are disadvantaged by lower scale and technology maturity. • A significant trade-off exists between environmental impacts and durability.

Product carbon footprints (PCFs) are playing an increasing role in decisions around sustainability for companies and consumers. Using data reported to CDP, we have previously built a dataset of 866 PCFs, from 145 companies, 30 industry groups, and 28 countries, showing trends of how upstream and downstream emissions vary by industry and how life cycle assessment (LCA) appears to aid companies in achieving steeper carbon reductions through improvements throughout a product’s value chain. Here, we present the greenhouse gas emissions and respective meta data for every product in this dataset. The Carbon Catalogue provides each product with name and description, PCF (in kg CO2e) and the respective LCA protocol/standard, product weight, as well as the name, industry, and country of incorporation of its manufacturer. For a subset of 421 products, the Carbon Catalogue further includes the PCF’s reported breakdown into two to nine separate stages of the product’s life cycle. For another subset of 250 products, the Carbon Catalogue includes how the respective PCFs changed and why the changes occurred.