Life cycle assessment of a railway tracks substructures: Comparison of ballast and ballastless rail tracks

The increase of train speed and axle load is an essential goal to make the railway transport more and more competitive for passengers and freights. On this basis, the unevenness of the railway track is crucial for the safety of the railway due to the high speed of the vehicle. Although ballasted tracks represent by far the most used railway track substructure, in recent years the modernization process has led the development of the ballastless track substructures.In deciding between the use of ballasted or ballastless track substructure there are many important technical, economical and environmental factors that have to be addressed. Based on the above, the principal objective of this study was to evaluate the environmental impact of different railway track substructures including ballast, cast-in sleeper and embedded track systems on the short, medium and long term. To accomplish this task, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out throughout the entire life cycle of the railway infrastructure by using the ReCiPe (H) method. Although such approach is commonly included in the environmental assessment of building products and buildings, it was rarely applied in the analysis of the environmental impacts of railway track substructure.Thus, the result of these LCA showed that ballasted tracks cause the lowest environmental impact for service lives of up to 75 years. On the other hand, the embedded track beds cause the highest environmental impacts, regardless of their service life. The highest contributor for the environmental impacts of the track beds was the steel production.The results of this study will provide relevant environmental information for engineers and decision makers to select the most adequate railway track substructures for addressing issues related to the pursuit of sustainable development.     

Inclusion of Noise in Environmental Assessment of Road Transportation

In life cycle assessment (LCA) of road transportation systems, limited attention is given to noise as an impact category. This paper presents a method in order to include the environmental effects of noise in the LCA of road transportation. Life cycle inventory is developed based on the IMAGINE road vehicle noise emission model. Life cycle impact assessment is based on cause-effect chain including fate, exposure, effect, and damage analysis. The health effects of road traffic noise are evaluated in terms of acute myocardial infarction, annoyance, and sleep disturbance. The corresponding health damages are quantified using disability adjusted life years (DALY). A case study evaluating the health effects of road transportation noise for the nine municipalities of Istanbul using the proposed method is also presented. It was shown that transportation noise has significant adverse health effects and therefore should be accounted for in the LCA of road transportation along with other environmental interventions.     

Regionalization of land use impact models for life cycle assessment: Recommendations for their use on the global scale and their applicability to Brazil

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the main technique for evaluate the environmental impacts of product life cycles. A major challenge in the field of LCA is spatial and temporal differentiation in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods, especially impacts resulting from land occupation and land transformation. Land use characterization modeling has advanced considerably over the last two decades and many approaches have recently included crucial aspects such as geographic differentiation. Nevertheless, characterization models have so far not been systematically reviewed and evaluated to determine their applicability to South America. Given that Brazil is the largest country in South America, this paper analyzes the main international characterization models currently available in the literature, with a view to recommending regionalized models applicable on a global scale for land use life cycle impact assessments, and discusses their feasibility for regionalized assessment in Brazil. The analytical methodology involves classification based on the following criteria: midpoint/endpoint approach, scope of application, area of data collection, biogeographical differentiation, definition of recovery time and reference situation; followed by an evaluation of thirteen scientific robustness and environmental relevance subcriteria. The results of the scope of application are distributed among 25% of the models developed for the European context, and 50% have a global scope. There is no consensus in the literature about the definition of parameters such biogeographical differentiation and reference situation, and our review indicates that 35% of the models use ecoregion division while 40% use the concept of potential natural vegetation. Four characterization models show high scores in terms of scientific robustness and environmental relevance. These models are recommended for application in land use life cycle impact assessments, and also to serve as references for the development or adaptation of regional methodological procedures for Brazil.     

Logistic sequencing for improving environmental performance using ant colony optimization

A significant portion of air pollutions in a city comes from road transport. Shorter travelling distance and less fuel consumption would logically lead to lower emissions of greenhouse gases or particulate matters, thus relieve environmental burdens. In this regard, an appropriate selection of the logistic sequence may contribute significantly to the environment. The logistic sequence for pickup and delivery services are often determined based on decision makers' experience and intuitive judgements. While life cycle assessment (LCA), a well-versed approach, can be used for quantifying the environmental loads, it is often regarded as not suitable for making routine decisions because it takes significant time and resources for data collection as well as expert knowledge for result interpretation. Additionally, the results of LCA studies focus mainly on the environmental perspective and that other decision criteria cannot be taken into account in a single evaluation process. This paper attempts to develop a practical and objective tool, by combining a simplified LCA with the ant colony optimization algorithm, that supports evaluating several decision criteria simultaneously and determining the optimal or near optimal sequence for vehicle routing on pickup and delivery activities. This fit-for-purpose approach enables decision makers to pay attention to environmental impacts during the determination of the travelling sequences. The proposed approach has been successfully performed to identify the optimal solution through benchmarking against other possible sequences, with the aim to reducing environmental impact while balancing other decision criteria.     

The contribution of sensor-based equipment to life cycle assessment through improvement of data collection in the industry

Within the paradigm of “Industry 4.0”, data collection and management acquire new relevance. In this context, the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the manufacturing field allows to develop information systems able to offer the possibility of using a large amount of data collected from heterogeneous sources in real time. The information thus obtained is functional not only to the attainment of an industrial development but also for evaluation and improvement of its sustainability. For example, the benefit obtainable for the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology from the new digital configuration is represented by a greater specificity of data that wireless sensors networks (WSN) measure and transmit in a continuous way.This paper explores the benefit of using a sensor for the evaluation of the environmental impact, in particular for LCA, in an Italian company producing chemical formulations. The machinery electric consumption directly measured data is compared with the same data estimated with mathematical models. It highlights how much different approach of data measurement and calculation can affect the LCA results. The detection of the energy variable related to a single machine for a particular process, which has been described in the paper, represents a first step towards the implementation of a WSN, proposed by Scatol8 srl, to be used to produce in a more sustainable way.     

Developing an automated BIM-based life cycle assessment approach for modularly designed high-rise buildings

Modular construction has attracted increasing attention due to its energy and environmental benefits. Digital technologies such as building information modelling (BIM) have also been explored to generate and manage data through the lifecycle of buildings. Although research has been performed in the area of integrating BIM and modular construction, BIM-based automated lifecycle assessment (LCA) of prefabricated buildings remains unexplored. This study therefore aims to develop a BIM-based LCA method for prefabricated buildings incorporating different assessment levels with unique system boundaries and functional units. The developed approach can support automated assessments through all lifecycle phases of a prefabricated building. It is achieved through an automated process of creating parameters to merge LCA data into the building model, systematic zoning, model setup and impact estimation. This approach is applied to evaluate the energy and environmental performances of a case building in Hong Kong. The case study validated the efficiency of the developed BIM-based LCA method in providing a systematic and detailed assessment of modularly designed buildings. This study extends the knowledge in automated BIM-based LCA by addressing specific characteristics of prefabrication and promotes the incorporation of comprehensive and detailed LCA data into BIM models for improved design robustness and holistic performances of buildings. This validated approach will enhance the willingness of designers to apply LCA during the design stages for minimizing the energy and environmental impacts of both new and renovated buildings with prefabrication.     

Techno-economic and environmental assessment of wastewater management systems: Life cycle approach

The septic-tank and tanker (STT) system is a traditional wastewater management practice commonly used in many developing countries. The system is based on septic tanks that are pumped out by sewage tankers on a regular basis. Although the STT system is gradually being replaced by conventional gravity sewers (CGS), the high capital cost of this shift remains a major obstacle. This research aims to investigate the economic feasibility and environmental footprint of an alternative wastewater management system compared to existing sanitation systems. The study examines the small-bore sewers (SBS) system which utilizes the existing septic tanks to separate solids from gravity-conveyed effluent. A comparative assessment of the three systems (STT, CGS, and SBS) along with their treatment facilities was conducted on a residential area in the United Arab Emirates. Local design criteria of the SBS system were proposed based on current CGS guidelines and international SBS standards. A cost-integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out in order to evaluate the environmental and economic aspects of the three management strategies. The total present value of the SBS strategy was found to be significantly higher than those of STT and CGS, respectively. Moreover, a 67% smaller treatment plant was sufficient to serve the SBS effluent. The LCA results revealed that the CGS strategy imparted the highest damage to the environment in all impact categories considered including global warming potential, whereas, the STT system produced a higher impact than SBS in six out of the eleven tested impact categories. Overall, while the STT strategy was the least financially feasible, the CGS had the largest environmental footprint. The eco-efficiency assessment revealed that the SBS strategy was the most favored among the examined strategies.     

Life cycle assessment as an analytical tool in strategic environmental assessment. Lessons learned from a case study on municipal energy planning in Sweden

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is explored as an analytical tool in strategic environmental assessment (SEA), illustrated by case where a previously developed SEA process was applied to municipal energy planning in Sweden. The process integrated decision-making tools for scenario planning, public participation and environmental assessment. This article describes the use of LCA for environmental assessment in this context, with focus on methodology and practical experiences. While LCA provides a systematic framework for the environmental assessment and a wider systems perspective than what is required in SEA, LCA cannot address all aspects of environmental impact required, and therefore needs to be complemented by other tools. The integration of LCA with tools for public participation and scenario planning posed certain methodological challenges, but provided an innovative approach to designing the scope of the environmental assessment and defining and assessing alternatives.     

Process integrated modelling for steelmaking Life Cycle Inventory analysis

During recent years, strict environmental regulations have been implemented by governments for the steelmaking industry in order to reduce their environmental impact. In the frame of the ULCOS project, we have developed a new methodological framework which combines the process integrated modelling approach with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method in order to carry out the Life Cycle Inventory of steelmaking. In the current paper, this new concept has been applied to the sinter plant which is the most polluting steelmaking process. It has been shown that this approach is a powerful tool to make the collection of data easier, to save time and to provide reliable information concerning the environmental diagnostic of the steelmaking processes.     

Comparative life cycle assessments: The case of paper and digital media

The consumption of the written word is changing, as media transitions from paper products to digital alternatives. We reviewed the life cycle assessment (LCA) research literature that compared the environmental footprint of digital and paper media. To validate the role of context in influencing LCA results, we assessed LCAs that did not compare paper and print, but focused on a product or component that is part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Using a framework that identifies problems in LCA conduct, we assessed whether the comparative LCAs were accurate expressions of the environmental footprints of paper and print. We hypothesized that the differences between the product systems that produce paper and digital media weaken LCA's ability to compare environmental footprints. We also hypothesized that the characteristics of ICT as an industrial sector weaken LCA as an environmental assessment methodology. We found that existing comparative LCAs offered problematic comparisons of paper and digital media for two reasons — the stark material differences between ICT products and paper products, and the unique characteristics of the ICT sector. We suggested that the context of the ICT sector, best captured by the concept of “Moore's Law”, will continuously impede the ability of the LCA methodology to measure ICT products.     

Environmental product declarations in accordance with EN 15804 and EN 16485 — How to account for primary energy of secondary resources?

As a core product category rule (PCR), EN 15804 defines rules for conducting the life cycle assessment (LCA) of building products in the context of environmental product declarations (EPDs). This European standard is complemented by EN 16485, which provides further guidance for specific aspects for the LCA of wood and wood-based construction products. For all life cycle stages under consideration, the renewable and non-renewable primary energy employed for energy generation or material use is accounted for. Furthermore, the inputs and outputs of secondary materials (SM), renewable secondary fuels (RSF) and non-renewable secondary fuels (NRSF) have to be reported. Especially in the end-of life stage as well as in the production stage, the standards do not exactly rule the accounting method of the primary energy contained in SM, RSF and NRSF. As both standards leave room for interpretation, we wrote this discussion article to introduce this issue to the LCA community and to present our developed accounting specifications. In general, we consider EN 15804 and EN 16485 as helpful tools for the LCA of building products. We hope that our ideas on certain aspects contribute to a better understanding of the standards, possibly leading to further improvement in the course of the standardization process.     

Towards a more holistic sustainability assessment framework for agro-bioenergy systems — A review

The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a sustainability assessment tool for agro-bioenergy system usually has an industrial agriculture bias. Furthermore, LCA generally has often been criticized for being a decision maker tool which may not consider decision takers perceptions. They are lacking in spatial and temporal depth, and unable to assess sufficiently some environmental impact categories such as biodiversity, land use etc. and most economic and social impact categories, e.g. food security, water security, energy security. This study explored tools, methodologies and frameworks that can be deployed individually, as well as in combination with each other for bridging these methodological gaps in application to agro-bioenergy systems. Integrating agronomic options, e.g. alternative farm power, tillage, seed sowing options, fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation into the boundaries of LCAs for agro-bioenergy systems will not only provide an alternative agro-ecological perspective to previous LCAs, but will also lead to the derivation of indicators for assessment of some social and economic impact categories. Deploying life cycle thinking approaches such as energy return on energy invested-EROEI, human appropriation of net primary production-HANPP, net greenhouse gas or carbon balance-NCB, water footprint individually and in combination with each other will also lead to further derivation of indicators suitable for assessing relevant environmental, social and economic impact categories. Also, applying spatio-temporal simulation models has a potential for improving the spatial and temporal depths of LCA analysis.     

Circular economy application for a Green Stadium construction towards sustainable FIFA world cup Qatar 2022™

The construction industry is responsible for a significant amount of raw material consumption and environmental footprints. Therefore, sustainable construction became a hot topic, which strives to reduce material consumption, limit constructional waste disposal, and decrease contribution to climate change. In line with Qatar's commitment to organizing a sustainable FIFA World Cup in 2022, this study aims to conduct an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) for the construction of the Education City Stadium. The work presented here provides the first empirical LCA for analyzing the environmental and economic impacts of circular economy application in a World Cup stadium. In this research, the cyclopean concrete (CYC) methodology was utilized, which incorporate the site excavated boulders with the concrete mix to cast the under-raft foundation of the stadium. This approach was compared to the conventional concrete (CC) casting approach to assess the extent to which the newly developed methodology can reduce the environmental and economic burdens. The obtained results have shown a 32% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when adapting the CYC approach. Thus, the CYC holds a strong promise to achieve the required structural behavior with a low-cost alternative material from existing waste products in Qatar and a lower environmental impact than the CC.     

Life cycle assessment based environmental impact estimation model for pre-stressed concrete beam bridge in the early design phase

The late rise in global concern for environmental issues such as global warming and air pollution is accentuating the need for environmental assessments in the construction industry. Promptly evaluating the environmental loads of the various design alternatives during the early stages of a construction project and adopting the most environmentally sustainable candidate is therefore of large importance. Yet, research on the early evaluation of a construction project's environmental load in order to aid the decision making process is hitherto lacking. In light of this dilemma, this study proposes a model for estimating the environmental load by employing only the most basic information accessible during the early design phases of a project for the pre-stressed concrete (PSC) beam bridge, the most common bridge structure. Firstly, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on the data from 99 bridges by integrating the bills of quantities (BOQ) with a life cycle inventory (LCI) database. The processed data was then utilized to construct a case based reasoning (CBR) model for estimating the environmental load. The accuracy of the estimation model was then validated using five test cases; the model's mean absolute error rates (MAER) for the total environmental load was calculated as 7.09%. Such test results were shown to be superior compared to those obtained from a multiple-regression based model and a slab area base-unit analysis model. Henceforth application of this model during the early stages of a project is expected to highly complement environmentally friendly designs and construction by facilitating the swift evaluation of the environmental load from multiple standpoints.     

Towards a green and fast production system: Integrating life cycle assessment and value stream mapping for decision making

Integrating environmental commitment to manufacturing concerns seems unavoidable towards a more sustainable conduct. In the contemporary scenario, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) has been bringing new perspectives into companies' economics, improving production performance, whereas Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been the most complete tool for environmental assessment. Therefore, the present study aims to propose a model based on the integration of LCA and VSM to improve environmental and manufacturing aspects of organizations, the LCA-VSM model. Possible spots for integration, overlaps between LCA and VSM and potential gains were identified. The LCA-VSM model provides a simple tool for prioritizing action measures to improve the environmental-economic performance, and unlike many existing methods, it encourages continuous improvement instead of a one-off approach. The company where a case study was conducted to test the LCA-VSM model is a manufacturer of tools and painting materials for the civil construction sector. The use of the proposed model guided actions that decreased from 5% to 15% of environmental impacts (across nine impact categories), and reduced both non-value adding (lead time went from 103.26 to 24.01 days) and value adding (cycle time went from 35.7 s to 33.75 s) time. The main contribution of this paper is providing a structured approach to a practical integration of LCA and VSM towards decision making, prioritizing action measures based on the following criteria: environmental preference, economic feasibility, and ease of implementation, aiding more eco-efficient practices.     

Eco-Efficiency of Electric and Electronic Appliances: A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

Several papers have studied the eco-efficiency of manufacturing systems to address strategic socioeconomic issues in the context of sustainability analysis. Their goal has been to take into account not only environmental impact aspects throughout the whole life cycle but also to incorporate the associated economic value as well, thus, giving a comprehensive vision of both factors. This paper focuses on different commonplace household electric appliances, comparing their eco-efficiency computed using a data envelopment analysis model. We consider the retail price as a measure of the product’s economic value and the ecopoint LCA score as the assessment of its environmental impact. We conclude that cell phones and the bulky analyzed appliances have the highest eco-efficiency scores, whereas the rest would require a more environmentally friendly redesign and/or an increase in their perceived value to improve their eco-efficiency.     

LCA Integrated ANP Framework for Selection of Sustainable Manufacturing Processes

In recent times, the focus of sustainable development has been shifted toward the process domain to achieve greater environmental benefits. Improved sustainability in the process domain can be achieved by selecting sustainable process or through improvement studies. In this study, sustainability performance of injection molding (IM) and selective laser sintering (SLS) processes are compared to select the sustainable process. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely accepted for assessing the environmental performance of manufacturing process. However, the problem with LCA is the interpretation of impact category scores when comparing alternate processes. Therefore, an effort has been made to integrate analytical network process (ANP) methodology with LCA in which LCA methodology calculates the impact score and ANP computes the Single Point Process Sustainability Score (SPPSS) to compare alternate processes. Based on the inventory data collected for higher production rates, SPPSS for IM and SLS processes are computed as 0.038 and 0.068, respectively. Based on the score, IM has been identified as a sustainable process for higher production volume. Hence, the practical usability of the proposed methodology is validated by the study. This study also appreciates the application of ANP along with LCA for decision making in the real-time scenario.     

Environmental sustainability of textiles and apparel: A review of evaluation methods

Environmental sustainability, which considers the tradeoff between economic productivity and environmental impact, is an important perspective in product decisions for textiles and apparel companies. Evaluating environmental sustainability for textile products has been difficult because of the complexity in the production and consumption processes. This paper provides a review of the methods that can be potentially used for measurement of environmental sustainability. These methods include the life cycle assessment, environmental footprint, eco-efficiency and Higg index. This paper reviewed the methodologies of these approaches and discussed about their limitations against the unique context of the textiles and apparel industry. We proposed a couple of directions where future research should be focused on, which may lead to ultimate solutions.     

Combination of life cycle assessment,risk assessment and human biomonitoring to improve regulatory decisions and policy making for chemicals

Prior to market entry, new chemical substances are assessed for their risk to human health and the environment. Conventional risk assessment (RA) is limited in scope, i.e. it usually does not cover the entire life cycle of a substance, nor does it take into account sustainability aspects such as the amount of raw materials and energy required to produce the substance. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can provide this pivotal information to support an informed decision on the sustainability of a new substance. Unfortunately, LCA has had little regulatory application up to now. We believe that increasing the focus on combined use of LCA and life cycle-based RA could lead to improved regulatory long-term decisions for marketed chemicals. Inclusion of human biomonitoring could increase the robustness of such decisions even further. In addition, the combined use of the three methods allows a robust search for sustainable alternatives of currently marketed chemicals that have an unfavourable risk profile.     

An Analytic Network Process approach for the environmental aspect selection problem — A case study for a hand blender

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess, in a systematic way, the environmental aspects and its potential environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle. It is widely accepted and considered as one of the most powerful tools to support decision-making processes used in ecodesign and sustainable production in order to learn about the most problematic parts and life cycle phases of a product and to have a projection for future improvements. However, since Life Cycle Assessment is a cost and time intensive method, companies do not intend to carry out a full version of it, except for large corporate ones. Especially for small and medium sized enterprises, which do not have enough budget for and knowledge on sustainable production and ecodesign approaches, focusing only on the most important possible environmental aspect is unavoidable. In this direction, finding the right environmental aspect to work on is crucial for the companies. In this study, a multi-criteria decision-making methodology, Analytic Network Process is proposed to select the most relevant environmental aspect. The proposed methodology aims at providing a simplified environmental assessment to producers. It is applied for a hand blender, which is a member of the Electrical and Electronic Equipment family. The decision criteria for the environmental aspects and relations of dependence are defined. The evaluation is made by the Analytic Network Process in order to create a realistic approach to inter-dependencies among the criteria. The results are computed via the Super Decisions software. Finally, it is observed that the procedure is completed in less time, with less data, with less cost and in a less subjective way than conventional approaches.