urban sinks accumulate phosphorus and other elements and may serve as sources of secondaryraw materials. this paper evaluates phosphorus sources based on their environmental impact. in a life cycleassessment (lca) the conventional production was used as a yardstick against which tomeasure the performanceof two recycling options: spreading of sewage sludge and phosphorus recovery from municipal ...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly becoming a common technique to assess the embodied energy and carbon of buildings and their components over their life cycle. However, the vast majority of existing LCAs result in very definite, deterministic values which carry a false sense of certainty and can mislead decisions and judgments. This article tackles the lack of uncertainty analysis in ...

The integration of emergy analysis with Life Cycle Assessment is not only useful, but, in the opinion of the authors, often essential and overdue. In particular, implementing emergy within one of the commercially-available LCA software packages allows the analyst to make use of the internationally-recognized databases and to produce results in a quicker, more consistent, and more reliable way i...

PURPOSE Bioenergy is increasingly used to help meet greenhouse gas (GHG) and renewable energy targets. However, bioenergy's sustainability has been questioned, resulting in increasing use of life cycle assessment (LCA). Bioenergy systems are global and complex, and market forces can result in significant changes, relevant to LCA and policy. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the complexiti...

Sustainability recognizes the interdependence of ecological, social, and economic systems, and nowhere is the concept of sustainability more critical than in developing nations, whose economies rely heavily on natural resources. Software for life cycle assessment (LCA) is becoming increasingly effective in evaluating the potential environmental and resource impacts of design and supply chain de...

Wind energy, commonly recognized to be a clean and environmentally friendly renewable energy resource that can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, has developed rapidly in recent years. Its mature technology and comparatively low cost make it promising as an important primary energy source in the future. However, there are potential environmental impacts due to the installation and operation...

Within industrial ecology, there is a substantial community focusing on life cycle assessment (LCA) and corresponding tools and methods. Within the field of supply chain management, an increasing community is converging around sustainable supply chains. These two communities study the same underlying systems, but bring different perspectives to bear. We review seven issues that arise at this in...

The paper summarises the main results gathered from two extensive applications of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the integrated municipal solid waste management systems of Torino and Cuneo Districts in northern Italy. Scenarios with substantial differences in terms of amount of waste, percentage of SC and strategies for the disposal of residual waste are used in order to discuss on strategies t...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has a number of defining characteristics that enables it to address questions that no other assessment tools can address. This chapter begins by demonstrating how the use of LCA in the late 2000s led to a drastic shift in the dominant perception that biofuels were “green”, “sustainable” or “carbon neutral”, which led to a change in biofuel policies. This is followed ...

As the pressures on the chemical and process industries to improve their environmental performance are increasing, the need to move away from narrow system de®nitions and concepts in environmental system management is becoming more apparent. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is gaining wider acceptance as a method that enables quanti®cation of environmental interventions and evaluation of the improve...