Use of Life Cycle Assessment in Environmental Management

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to develop strategic policies that can lead to a minimization of the environmental burden resulting from the provision of services or the manufacture, use, and disposal of products within the economy. We accomplish this aim by presenting a case study that evaluates the greenhouse gas contributions of each stage in the life cycle of containerboard packaging and the potential impact on emissions of various policy options available to decision-makers. Our analysis showed that, in general, the most useful strategy was to recycle the used packaging. However, our analysis also indicated that when measures are taken to eliminate sources of methane emissions, then recycling is no longer beneficial from a greenhouse perspective. This is because the process energy required in the form of gas and electricity is substantially greater for containerboard manufactured from recycled material than it is for virgin fiber.     

LCA: A decision support tool for environmental assessment of MSW management systems

Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be successfully applied to municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems to identify the overall environmental burdens and to assess the potential environmental impacts. In this study, two methods used for current MSW management in Phuket, a province of Thailand, landfilling (without energy recovery) and incineration (with energy recovery), are compared from both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission points of view. The comparisons are based on a direct activity consideration and also a life cycle perspective. In both cases as well as for both parameters considered, incineration was found to be superior to landfilling. However, the performance of incineration was much better when a life cycle perspective was used. Also, landfilling reversed to be superior to incineration when methane recovery and electricity production were introduced. This study reveals that a complete picture of the environmental performance of MSW management systems is provided by using a life cycle perspective.     

利用生命周期评价方法分析上海市某区生活垃圾处理的温室气体排放

通过生命周期评价（LCA）的方法,对上海市某区生活垃圾处理现状及4个不同可选处理方案的温室气体（GHG）排放量进行了分析。结果表明,当前该区生活垃圾处理系统的GHG排放总量为776.42 t CO2eq.,其中填埋、焚烧和堆肥分别占33%、39%和20%,其他处理单元仅占8%。通过4个可选方案的对比表明,采取垃圾分类收...     

A Multi-Years Analysis of the Energy Balance,Green Gas Emissions,and Production Costs of First and Second Generation Bioethanol

Contemporary reports on the energy and environmental benefits of bioethanol have suggested that the cellulosic ethanol is significantly more efficient. To understand the development potential of energy crops in Taiwan, the present study has assessed the resources and cost inputs for the planning, harvesting, transporting, and storing procedures of the first generation energy crops during 2007–2010 with the perspective of LCA. In addition, a field investigation focusing on rice straw, the largest agricultural waste in Taiwan, has been conducted since 2010 to obtain fundamental data.This study further analyzes the first and second-generation feedstocks from the perspective of LCA based on field investigated data. Taiwan has not yet established an ethanol plant; therefore, this study established production data by simulating the production efficiency of an economical scale using parameters obtained through production trials, and proposed an evaluation model for the energy input, GHG, and production costs of bioethanol in Taiwan. The results of this study were cross-compared with foreign literature to explore the development potential of bioethanol in Taiwan. The results indicate that based on the current cellulosic ethanol technology in Taiwan, regarding the energy balance, GHG, and production costs, is less efficient than that of the first generation bioethanol.     

Resource Consumption and Environmental Impacts of the Agrofood Sector: Life Cycle Assessment of Italian Citrus-Based Products

Food production and consumption cause significant environmental burdens during the product life cycles. As a result of intensive development and the changing social attitudes and behaviors in the last century, the agrofood sector is the highest resource consumer after housing in the EU. This paper is part of an effort to estimate environmental impacts associated with life cycles of the agrofood chain, such as primary energy consumption, water exploitation, and global warming. Life cycle assessment is used to investigate the production of the following citrus-based products in Italy: essential oil, natural juice, and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The related process flowcharts, the relevant mass and energy flows, and the key environmental issues are identified for each product. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts from cradle to gate for citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance.

Comparing Green and Grey Infrastructure Using Life Cycle Cost and Environmental Impact: A Rain Garden Case Study in Cincinnati,OH

Green infrastructure (GI) is quickly gaining ground as a less costly, greener alternative to traditional methods of stormwater management. One popular form of GI is the use of rain gardens to capture and treat stormwater. We used life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare environmental impacts of residential rain gardens constructed in the Shepherd's Creek watershed of Cincinnati, Ohio to those from a typical detain and treat system. LCA is an internationally standardized framework for analyzing the potential environmental performance of a product or service by including all stages in its life cycle, including material extraction, manufacturing, use, and disposal. Complementary to the life cycle environmental impact assessment, the life cycle costing approach was adopted to compare the equivalent annual costs of each of these systems. These analyses were supplemented by modeling alternative scenarios to capture the variability in implementing a GI strategy. Our LCA models suggest rain garden costs and impacts are determined by labor requirement; the traditional alternative's impacts are determined largely by the efficiency of wastewater treatment, while costs are determined by the expense of tunnel construction. Gardens were found to be the favorable option, both financially (~42% cost reduction) and environmentally (62‐98% impact reduction). Wastewater utilities may find significant life cycle cost and environmental impact reductions in implementing a rain garden plan.