Organizational Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

2030 oil palm plantation carbon footprint estimation using O-LCA and forecasting

Since palm oil products have a crucial role in society development, palm oil business in Indonesia has grown significantly over the past few decades. However, this industry is frequently linked to environmental issues, particularly its potential emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study attempts to estimate the carbon footprint of a palm oil company's operation for the year of 2030. In doing so, a novel methodology that consists of organizational lifecycle assessment (O-LCA), simple linear regression (SLR), and double exponential smoothing (DES) methods is proposed. O-LCA is used to identify the sources of emission and estimate the amount of the emission generated, while SLR and DES are used to forecast the sources. As the result, the carbon footprint in 2030 is estimated to be 62,758,433.56 kg Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) where on average a ton of crude palm oil (CPO) produces 1.08 ton CO2eq. The study also discloses that the three largest emission sources are palm oil mill effluent (POME), fertilizer, and transportation. The forecasting methods used are quite accurate with mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of less than 10%. The results of this study can shed a light to help Indonesia achieving its target to reduce GHG emission by 2030.

Evaluating the social performance of Ecuadorian textile MSMEs using Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment

Integrating sustainability into Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) poses challenges due to limited resources, low social awareness, and particular cultural factors. Despite this, MSMEs play a crucial role in countries' development since they constitute an essential actor in generating wealth and employment. Therefore, determining tools and methods to support sustainable decision-making and understanding the impacts in MSMEs is a significant challenge. This work describes the application of Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) in three case studies of the Ecuadorian textile MSME sector to analyze their impacts regarding the social dimension. To this end, 121 inventory indicators linked to workers' and consumers' subcategories were applied. Utilizing sunburst charts, social performance is analyzed at subcategory and indicator levels. Company A showed intermediate worker performance with well-managed Occupational Safety and Health (OSH). Company B excelled, particularly in OSH, social benefits, and working hours. Despite its size, Company C had the lowest overall performance but exhibited superior Consumer category performance. This application of SO-LCA in the MSME sector offers insights for systematic evaluation, identifying areas for improvement and commendable practices. The study discusses implementing SO-LCA in small firms, highlighting the need for methodological adjustments to enhance applicability in this sector.

Environmental footprinting of hospitals: Organizational life cycle assessment of a Canadian hospital

AbstractHealthcare is a critical and complex service sector with direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions amounting to 5%–10% of the national total in developed economies like Canada and the United States. Along with a growing, albeit sporadic, set of life cycle assessment (LCA) (and “carbon footprinting”) studies of specific medical products and procedures, there is growing interest in “environmental footprinting” of hospitals. In this article, we advance this rapidly evolving area through a comprehensive organizational LCA of a 40‐bed hospital in British Columbia, Canada, in its 2019 fiscal year. Our results indicate that the total environmental footprint of the hospital includes, among other things, global warming potential of 3500–5000 t CO2 eq. (with 95% confidence). “Hotspots” in this footprint are attributable to energy and water use (and wastewater released), releases of anesthetic gases (which are potent GHGs), and the upstream production of the thousands of materials, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other products used in the hospital. The generalizability and comparability of these results are limited by inconsistencies across the few environmental footprinting studies of hospitals conducted to date. Nonetheless, our novel methodological approach, in which we compiled new LCA data for 200 goods and services used in healthcare—strategically selected to statistically represent the 2927 unique products in the hospital's “supply‐chains”—has broad applicability in healthcare and beyond.

Organizational life cycle assessment of a corporate group

Organizational life cycle assessment of a corporate group

Correction: Rimano et al. The Environmental Impact of Organizations: A Pilot Test from the Packaging Industry Based on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11402

The authors would like to make the following corrections about the published paper [...]

Combining organizational and product life cycle perspective to explore the environmental benefits of steel slag recovery practices

Sustainability in steel production is considered a global challenge which needs to be faced with coordinated actions. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental improvements of a steel mill in a circular economy perspective, through the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) and the Product Life Cycle Assessment (P-LCA) methodologies. This study explores to what extent the improvements and the efforts to recover the steel slag can be detected using an organization perspective and making a comparison with the more traditional product perspective.The results obtained show that the case in which the steel slag is recovered has lower impacts than the case in which it is landfilled through both O-LCA and P-LCA applications and that the percentage variations are similar for 8 categories out of 10 demonstrating that for our case study, O-LCA and P-LCA can detect the efforts to recover slag similarly. Two categories, namely ADP-minerals&metals and EP-freshwater, are affected by the greater amount of metal and mineral raw materials needed if the slag is not treated and by the steel slag landfill disposal more significantly. What the results tell us is that the variations obtained for this study in the P-LCA application are greater than those obtained in O-LCA application, due to two methodological aspects, namely the application of allocation procedures and the choice of the system boundaries. Finally, it emerges that O-LCA methodology can detect environmental improvements of circularity practices, but the reduction of the impacts is less clear than P-LCA application. What is transferable is that O-LCA and P-LCA methodologies are not interchangeable to quantify the environmental benefits and address the efforts to improve a process in terms of circularity.

Estimation of Palm Oil Plantation Carbon Footprint and Reduction Strategy Using the O-LCA and MCDM

According to data obtained from the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report (GHG) and Monitoring, Reporting, Verification (MPV), GHG emissions are mostly caused by five industries: energy, waste, agriculture, food and land use coalition, and industry. The palm oil industry has grown significantly during the past few decades, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. The primary output of the palm oil sector is crude palm oil (CPO). It is anticipated that Indonesia will keep trying to satisfy domestic demand for palm oil. However, people still seek out goods made with palm oil that is environmentally friendly to create. Environmental concerns, particularly the claim that CPO production is a source of carbon release, are another obstacle to Indonesia's CPO exports to European and American nations (Uning et al., 2020). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the recommended approach to measure a product's or process's environmental impact with accurate results, according to a body of literature (Wahyono & Hadiyanto, 2019). Although the life cycle assessment method was first developed to evaluate how items affect the environment, it may also be customized to meet the needs of the business. As a result of this modification, UNEP developed a brand-new technique known as Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA). There have not been many studies done in the past that use O-LCA to assess how business processes affect the environment, particularly with the idea of sustainability. Organizational life cycle assessments enable businesses to identify critical environmental operations and make improvements while considering a variety of sustainability variables, as well as other elements like environmental, economic, social, and technological considerations. Keywords: Carbon Footprint, Palm Oil Plantation, Life Cycle Analysis, Multi-Criteria

Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment of Transport Services: Case Studies in Colombia, Spain, and Malaysia

Freight operations are relevant for economies but can negatively impact society due to the performance of activities related to fuel production, vehicle manufacturing, and infrastructure construction. This study applies the social organizational life cycle assessment (SO-LCA) methodology to analyze the social performance of companies involved in the supply chain of road transport companies located in different contexts such as Latin American, European, and Asian. The results of the three case studies are compared to analyze the methodology’s robustness and the influence of development and culture on how social performance is perceived. An approach for the SO-LCA, based on the UNEP/SETAC guidelines, was applied to freight companies in Colombia, Spain, and Malaysia. This integrated approach considers the key components of the transport system: fuels, vehicles, and infrastructure. A multi-tier inventory analysis was performed for 26 social impact subcategories, and reference scale assessments were applied to obtain single and aggregated social performance indexes. Interviews with stakeholders were used to aggregate indexes and identify priorities for decision-making in different contexts. First, the stakeholders concurred that freight companies must focus on labor rights to improve their social performance. The second social category in order of importance was human rights, except in the Spanish case study, where it was socioeconomic repercussions. These results indicate that social impact subcategories are influenced by socioeconomic development and the culture or beliefs of its inhabitants. These specificities help identify hotspots and stakeholder concerns toward which transport companies should direct their efforts. This study expands the range of indicators for social impact measurement and the known literature by investigating social matters for different categories of stakeholders spanning three continents. When these indicators are fully developed, their consideration in management practices could benefit business practitioners.

Industry 4.0 real-world testing of dynamic organizational life cycle assessment (O-LCA) of a ceramic tile manufacturer

In manufacturing, Industry 4.0 operating models enable greener technologies. Thanks to digital technologies, environmental sustainability and organizational competitiveness are mutually reinforcing. The challenge for manufacturing organizations is to understand and quantify the magnitude of this synergistic action, and the holistic perspective of life cycle assessment tools may be a solution to the problem. Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) unlike Product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is still an under-researched methodology with few applications in manufacturing contexts. This paper aims to fill this gap by implementing and validating O-LCA in the case of an Italian ceramic tile manufacturer. Following the O-LCA guidelines and exploiting Industry 4.0 technologies to perform the inventory analysis, the environmental assessment was conducted in three different plants, comparing the sum of the partial impact results with the overall results scaled to the whole organization. The experimental results demonstrated the validity of the organizational approach as an appropriate methodological option to obtain relevant information on environmental performance that, being based on empirical evidence, better support decision-making processes. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence of how Industry 4.0 is an enabler not only for the adoption of greener technologies, but especially for facilitating the organizational environmental impact assessment that is the necessary condition in order to set up and maintain greener manufacturing contexts.

Combining Organizational Life Cycle Assessment with Company-Level Circularity Indicators: Case Study of a Vegan Zero-Waste Restaurant

Combining Organizational Life Cycle Assessment with Company-Level Circularity Indicators: Case Study of a Vegan Zero-Waste Restaurant

Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) and Organization 4.0: An easy-to-implement method

Organizations often face difficulties when measuring their social performance. The lack of international standards, the qualitative/quantitative nature of data, and the unavailability of primary sources all hinder social impact assessments, especially in manufacturing settings. To fill these gaps, the method proposes a simple application protocol of Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA), customized for an Italian ceramic tile manufacturer. The method leverages Industry 4.0 digital technologies to collect real-time primary and site-specific social data, making the social assessment dynamic. The managerial approach adopted for the selection of social metrics and weighting of indicators and indexes, can support the transition of the manufacturing organization into Organization 4.0. The method also provides a contribution to the operational validation of the UNEP guidelines by extending their area of application. Finally, the proposed method gives substance to social responsibility through social accounting, helping the organization to measure the correct social impact starting from the detailed data, namely the decisions made in the business and in production.•Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) application protocol validated in Industry 4.0 environment.•Social metrics directly linked to production and business processes for the dynamic assessment of social performance.•Easy replicability of the method in other organizational contexts.

A Systemic View of Future Mobility Scenario Impacts on and Their Implications for City Organizational LCA: The Case of Autonomous Driving in Vienna

Autonomous vehicles (AV) are expected to significantly reshape urban mobility. Whether advancements at vehicle level also translate into positive environmental outcomes at city level is still uncertain. We investigate under which conditions a city could enable low emission AV mobility and what challenges are to be expected along the way from an environmental point of view. We build upon our recent environmental performance study of Vienna and combine city organizational life cycle assessment (city-OLCA) with AV transport models from literature for three AV use cases: an own AV, a shared AV, and a shared AV ride service. Most cases lower Vienna’s passenger capacity (by up to 28%) and increase motorized road traffic by a maximum of 49% (own AVs). Traffic relief is observed for shared AVs (−40%) if accompanied by a conventional car ban. This case reduces transport related GHG emissions compared to both Vienna’s current baseline (−60%) and a future electrified transportation system (−4.2%). These transformations have also shifted emission responsibility to the public level. While Vienna’s total GHG emissions could be reduced by 12%, the city’s emission responsibility increases from 25% to 32%. Efficient mass transit, the electrification of the mobility sector and grid decarbonization are key to reducing transport emissions in Vienna. The direction of GHG emission development will be determined by the extent to which these conditions are promoted. AV mobility probably will not be a main contributor.

Industry 4.0-based dynamic Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment to target the social circular economy in manufacturing

Nowadays in manufacturing, the topic of sustainability plays a key role. However, over the years, economic crises and the climate change debate have focused the attention of scholars, industrialists and policy makers mainly on environmental sustainability, putting social sustainability on the back burner. This is also evident in the scientific literature which highlights several knowledge gaps. The digital transition of factories and Industry 4.0 technologies have not yet been fully exploited to correlate production and social metrics. As a result, there is a lack of adequate tools for monitoring social performance in the factory environment. In this context, the social dimension of the circular economy is still an under-researched topic. This study aims to fill these gaps by integrating Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) and Industry 4.0 technologies in a blended methodological approach designed to dynamically monitor the social performance of a major manufacturing industry. Using primary data, a set of site-specific social indicators and indexes were created to assess the organization's social impact against key stakeholder categories and subcategories. Finally, within that set, those social metrics that the organization considers essential to moving toward the circular economy were identified. Therefore, this study, has contributed to fill the literature gaps by demonstrating that the digitization of production processes, not only enables the assessment of environmental impact, but can also play a key role in knowing the social performance of a manufacturing organization and to identify the hidden social dimension in the circular economy.

The Environmental Impact of Organizations: A Pilot Test from the Packaging Industry Based on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment

This article presents and discusses a pilot test concerning the environmental impacts assessment of organizations. The study was conducted in a production site of a world leading group in the plastic packaging industry. The purpose was to deepen the knowledge of the methodologies currently available and also of the benefits and the difficulties related to their practical implementation. The analysis was conducted in the period 2018–2019, in line with ISO 14044 and ISO/TS 14072 standards and therefore inspired by the organizational life cycle assessment (O-LCA) procedures and standards. The O-LCA test application has proved useful in detecting a number of environmental hotspots usually not detected by other life cycle based approaches, on which the organization should focus to undertake improvement actions, both internal and external (e.g., the category “employees commuting”). The experience gained in the production site under study also led to the replication of the assessment approach to other facilities around the world and for informing corporate sustainability reporting activities (e.g., Global Reporting Initiative and Carbon Disclosure Project reporting standards). Such results can provide methodological and practical insights to both scholars and practitioners in that field of activities.

Organizational Life Cycle Assessment: A Systematic Review of Experiences, Applications and Lessons Learned

The main objective of this paper was to analyze the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) method, discussing its applicability based on papers that presented case studies or discussed the concept. Scientific productions from researchers and organizations were used to discuss advances in the O-LCA scientific approach. The systematic literature review method was performed, using the STARR-LCA (Zumsteg et al, 2012) and PRISMA (Moher et al, 2009) models, in 14 scientific papers indexed in two scientific databases, Scopus and Web of Science, from 2012 to 2020. It was given priority to the case studies that applied the OEF or UNEP / SETAC guides, but some authors approach other methods and practices as well, and some followed the steps of the OEF guidelines, ISO 14072 and O-LCA before the establishment of the methodologies themselves. As the O-LCA method is still recent, there are several understandings about its development. The data from this analysis helps organizations and researchers in understanding the divergences and issues that still need discussion to broaden the methodologies and emphasize their roles in the context of Life Cycle Assessment.

Accounting for Research Induced Environmental Impacts Using Life Cycle Assessment

Since the 1970's the number of scientific publications with sustainability as a keyword has increased from 1 in 1975 to 13,628 in 2019. Research, like all human endeavors, has impacts on the environment due to the activities required to generate the supporting data (i.e., use of vehicles, resources, and materials). Researchers have a responsibility to minimize their impacts as part of their work and to make environmentally responsible decisions. A life-cycle approach is currently the best-developed means of assessing the impact of a group or organization. This article presents a case study of organizational life cycle assessment (O-LCA) of a research project. The objectives of this study were to (i) estimate the impact of the project, focusing on travel. (ii) Use a post hoc approach to determine impact reduction opportunities. (iii) Apply O-LCA as a decision-making tool in project management of research and (iv) profile the environmental impact of the project using public data (manufacturers figures) and proprietary datasets. The results of this study indicate that the greatest impact arising from the project was due to commuting followed by conference and training attendance, fieldwork and meetings. Scenarios modeling, alternative vehicle use, flexible working arrangements and stakeholder events highlighted the reduction potential that could have been implemented as part of the project. O-LCA proved to be an appropriate tool for assessing the impact of a research group and that it has the potential to inform decisions and management of academic projects and events. It should be noted that the ability of research groups or personnel to bring about change might be limited, typically due to their placement within a larger organization (e.g., a higher education institute). The recent COVID-19 pandemic, has hastened the shift to remote working practices for many organizations. Recent surveys indicate that more than 80% of respondents would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, after the pandemic. This modal shift in working practices offers an immediate opportunity for environmental relief. It is recommended that O-LCA be incorporated into groups and organizations to support their decision-making practices to foster responsible and sustainable research.

A framework for environmental decision support in cities incorporating organizational LCA

Cities contribute to and are affected by several environmental pressures within and beyond city boundaries. Urban decision makers struggle to find environmentally sound strategies while respecting their obligation to provide the basis for a viable society. Methods to assess the environmental performance of cities beyond greenhouse gases either lack a holistic or multi-impact perspective which limits the informational value of recommendations for improvement. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is already seen as a promising tool to overcome this gap although research on LCA at city scale is still in its infancies. This paper introduces a novel approach for city-scale environmental decision support and extends the current methodological discussion to organizational LCA (OLCA). A four-step procedure was followed. Firstly, a universal city structure was developed by reviewing different city characteristics and by conducting a virtual case study. Secondly, this structure was split into assessment levels by a stakeholder analysis to reflect different levels of decision support. Thirdly, OLCA’s capabilities to cover the required assessment levels were evaluated. Lastly, methodological uncertainties were discussed, and the assessment framework was finalized by giving guidance on how to extend OLCA to city needs. An environmental assessment framework containing four assessment levels is proposed. Results show that OLCA is well suited to estimate potential environmental impacts associated with the provision of public services by the local government (level 1) and by contracted companies (level 2). Methodological challenges were encountered regarding the uncertain definition of the local government’s influence on private activities beyond public service provision (level 3a). Including activities that are neither directly nor indirectly influenced by the local government go beyond OLCA’s capabilities (level 3b). The framework proposed will support local governments in tracking their environmental performance, prioritizing mitigation measures, and considering transformational change in their strategic decisions. The organizational perspective makes OLCA a valuable approach for decision support at city level. This perspective, however, does not allow to capture all activities taking place within the city boundary and methods have to be found that adequately estimate a local government’s influence beyond public service provision. When aiming at developing long-term strategies to improve a city’s environmental performance, future availability of new technologies and business models that may further impact a local government’s influence need to be considered.

Organizational Life Cycle Assessment of a Service Providing SME for Renewable Energy Projects (PV and Wind) in the United Kingdom

Companies are increasingly interested in reducing their environmental footprint. Thereby, they face the challenge of identifying and mitigating their specific impacts and hotspots and simultaneously avoid burden shifting. The organizational life cycle assessment (OLCA) method was conceived and successfully tested for the assessment if companies’ potential environmental impacts. Still, the method poses methodological challenges for the application to service providing organizations. In this paper, OLCA was applied to a service providing SME in the photovoltaic and wind energy business in the United Kingdom. The environmental impact profile of the reporting organization is dominated by transport activities, including the technicians’ trips to the solar farms, employee commuting, and business travels. According to the main goals of the study (gaining insights in internal operations and improving organizational procedures), recommendations to reduce travel-related impacts are provided. For existing methodological challenges like selecting the reporting flow and setting the system boundaries, innovative solutions like defining multiple reporting flows for different activities and to partly include service receiving objects in system boundaries are discussed with the aim to facilitate future applications.

Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment: an approach for identification of relevant subcategories for wine production in Italy

This study proposes a systematic approach for identifying the relevant social issues of a sector or company to be integrated within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework. The approach is implemented through the Pugh matrix analysis in a wine company located in Abruzzo, Italy. The Pugh matrix is suitably modelled for social organizational life cycle assessment by considering the subcategories, i.e. social issues, and the stakeholder categories proposed by the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment UNEP/SETAC. The model is implemented by involving 31 consumers, 28 workers, 36 local community, and 7 value chain actors who were interviewed and asked to give a score by comparing pairwise the subcategories of each stakeholder, respectively. The results allowed the identification of the most relevant subcategories for the case under study. For example, the health and safety issue is evident as being relevant for different stakeholders (i.e. worker, local community and consumers). Furthermore, starting from the relevant subcategories, a set of indicators was identified. The indicators are allocated at two levels depending on the kind of data used for assessing the indicators (sites visit, consultation of reports or surveys and questionnaires). This study proposes and implements a model within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework as well as Social Life Cycle Assessment in order to support decision-makers in sustainability decisions, taking into account the entire value chain over time.

Life Cycle Approaches for the Environmental Impact Assessment of Organizations: Defining the State of the Art

Organizations play a key role in reducing anthropogenic pressure on the natural environment. The first step towards improving their sustainability performances is the implementation of methodologies that take into consideration multiple environmental impact categories, as well as the entire value chain. The attention of scholars and practitioners was initially addressed to the analysis of products and processes, yet in a few cases in which they were addressed, the approaches used for organizations had a limited scope and range of use. Only in recent years have they been framed in a life cycle perspective. This article analyzes two recent life cycle-based methodologies that have their focus on the organization, namely Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF) and Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA). The goal is to define the state of the art of their methodological and current application developments and consider the relevance that these methodologies can have, both in terms of internal and external commitment (e.g., for the supply chain actors) and of reporting and communication requirements. The research was carried out starting from scientific databases, integrating technical legislation and secondary literature. The results obtained allowed tracing the first evolutionary trends, identifying the main authors and scientific journals and highlighting the relevant issues according to the researchers. A content and bibliometric analysis was performed that included all the contributions published so far. Projects and case studies that practically applied the two methodologies were also identified and analyzed. Finally, the main differences between the two methodologies were highlighted and future developments were hypothesized.