A critical review of building environmental assessment tools

Since the field of environmental assessment tools for buildings is vast, the aim of this study is to clarify that field by analysing and categorising existing tools. The differences between the tools are discussed and the current situation within the tools is critically analysed. However, the comparison of the tools is difficult, if not impossible. For example, the tools are designed for assessing different types of buildings, and they emphasise different phases of the life cycle. In addition to environmental aspects, sustainable building includes economic and social aspects. The shift from green building to sustainable building and the future requirements are challenging for building environmental assessment tools. Furthermore, the benefits of using the tools should be analysed — how the tools and their results have affected decision making?     

山水林田湖草生命共同体的科学认知、路径及制度体系保障

山水林田湖草生命共同体是对人与自然和谐统一关系的新认知,是生态文明理论的重要组成部分。以建立一个山水林田湖草生命共同体的研究范式为目的,系统剖析了山水林田湖草生命共同体理论与应用在基础探索、快速发展和多元繁荣三个阶段的研究重点与特征;再次审视了山水林田湖草生命共同体的内涵、阐明了概念新认知、基本特征、人与生命共同体关系;最后提出面向山水林田湖草生命共同体的“问题—目标—时空策略—目的”的实施路径,及构建以自然资源监测监管体系、自然资源资产产权体系、国土空间规划体系、国土空间用途管制体系、国土空间生态修复体系、法律法规体系等为主的制度体系,进而提升其科学性和实用性,为构建国土空间治理体系及治理能力现代化提供决策支撑。     

On the usefulness of life cycle assessment of packaging

In reaction to a paper inEnvironmental Management in which the sense and sensibility of environmental assessments of packaging were questioned, it is argued that these types of assessments may be very useful, provided the relevant types of questions are posed. These boundary conditions are discussed, along with an overview of more recent methodological developments with respect to environmental assessment of products.     

An approach for analysing the potential for material efficiency improvement

Material efficiency improvement saves energy and reduces the consumption of primary resources and reduces the volume of waste. In this article an approach for analysing the potential for material efficiency improvement is proposed and discussed. In this approach the product functions performed by the materials and various improvement measures are taken into account. The potential for material saving and associated energy saving is assessed and evaluated economically. In this paper the approach is tested in an analysis of the potential for material efficiency improvement with respect to plastic packaging in the Netherlands. The technical reduction potential is found to be 34 ± 7% (157 ± 30 ktonne virgin plastics). Realization of this potential would improve the energy efficiency of the lifecycle of plastic packaging by 31% (10 PJ in 1988). From our study we conclude that our approach can indeed be used to investigate the potential for material efficiency improvement. However, a reliable technical and particularly an economical assessment of reduction measures cannot be made until more detailed data become available.     

Queen longevity,queen adoption,and posthumous indirect fitness in the facultatively polygynous ant Myrmica tahoensis

In many polygynous ant species, established colonies adopt new queens secondarily. Conflicts over queen adoption might arise between queens and workers of established colonies and the newly mated females seeking adoption into nests. Colony members are predicted to base adoption decisions on their relatednesses to other participants, on competition between queens for colony resources, and on the effects that adopted queens have on colony survivorship and productivity. To provide a better understanding of queen-adoption dynamics in a facultatively polygynous ant, colonies of Myrmica tahoensis were observed in the field for 4 consecutive years and analyzed genetically using highly polymorphic microsatellite DNA markers. The extreme rarity of newly founded colonies suggests that most newly mated queens that succeed do so by entering established nests. Queens are closely related on average (rˉ = 0.58), although a sizable minority of queen pairs (29%) are not close relatives. An experiment involving transfers of queens among nests showed that queens are often accepted by workers to which they are completely unrelated. Average queen numbers estimated from nest excavations (harmonic mean = 1.4) are broadly similar to effective queen numbers inferred from the genetic relatedness of colony members, suggesting that reproductive skew is low in this species. Queens appear to have reproductive lifespans of only 1 or 2 years. As a result, queens transmit a substantial fraction of their genes posthumously (through the reproduction of related nestmates), in comparison to direct and indirect reproduction while they are alive. Thus queens and other colony members should often accept new queens when doing so will increase colony survivorship, in some cases even when the adopted queens are not close relatives. Received: 20 February 1996/Accepted after revision: 25 May 1996     

Emissions associated with meeting the future global wheat demand: A case study of UK production under climate change constraints

Climate change, population growth and socio-structural changes will make meeting future food demands extremely challenging. As wheat is a globally traded food commodity central to the food security of many nations, this paper uses it as an example to explore the impact of climate change on global food supply and quantify the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. Published data on projected wheat production is used to analyse how global production can be increased to match projected demand. The results show that the largest projected wheat demand increases are in areas most likely to suffer severe climate change impacts, but that global demand could be met if northern hemisphere producers exploit climate change benefits to increase production and narrow their yield gaps. Life cycle assessment of different climate change scenarios shows that in the case of one of the most important wheat producers (the UK) it may be possible to improve yields with an increase of only 0.6% in the emission intensity per unit of wheat produced in a 2 °C scenario. However, UK production would need to rise substantially, increasing total UK wheat production emissions by 26%. This demonstrates how national emission inventories and associated targets do not incentivise minimisation of global greenhouse gas emissions while meeting increased food demands, highlighting a triad of challenges: meeting the rising demand for food, adapting to climate change and reducing emissions.     

Ecomanagement of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the Mediterranean Sea: concerns and strategies

Marine biodiversity is generally higher in benthic than in pelagic systems, and in coastal than in open sea systems. Sediments are the most human-impacted domain and therefore represent the target zone for both the study and actions needed for the preservation of biodiversity. Losses of marine diversity, higher (or simply more evident) in coastal areas, are generally the result of conflicting uses of coastal habitats. Large difficulties arise from the analysis and evaluation of the actual biodiversity, especially when different environments are compared, as often studies on biodiversity are dependent upon the distribution of the specialists. On the other hand, losses of marine biodiversity might be underestimated, due to the limited knowledge of the ecosystems' functioning, of the species inhabiting various habitats and of the still limited capacity to assess microbial biodiversity, which represents the largest fraction of the global marine biodiversity. Finally, claimed losses of biodiversity might be just apparent, as the sea floor is a bank of resting stages of various plankton species that are likely to spend even decades in the sediment before reactivating and inducing unattended blooms in the water column. The Mediterranean Sea displays high species diversity, but might reach the highest values in terms of adaptive strategies and functional diversity. Moreover, the Mediterranean Sea represents also a key area for the study of the relative influences of the natural and anthropogenic changes on biodiversity and its consequences on ecosystem functioning. Habitat destruction, over-fishing, contaminants, eutrophication, introduction of alien species, and climate changes are producing increasingly evident changes in community structure and biodiversity of this warm and miniature ocean. We summarized the main effects of different disruptive agents on the marine biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea, with special attention on the biodiversity relevance in ecosystem functioning and possible implications in bio-geochemical cycles. The present overview aims at focusing and synthesizing the most important factors potentially affecting the interactions between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the Mediterranean in order to better define possible strategies of conservation and eco-management.     

The Effect of Local Biomass Projects on Energy Balance and GHG Emission: A Life Cycle Approach

Emerging attention has been given to the use of biomass in local areas for its contribution to reducing fossil fuel dependence and mitigating global warming. The objective of the present study is to develop a method that quantitatively assesses the effects of local biomass projects on fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. A practical method based on a life cycle approach is proposed and applied to a case of bioethanol project in Miyako Islands of Japan. The project is aiming to produce bioethanol from molasses within the islands, and to replace the entire gasoline consumed in the islands to E3 fuel (i.e., a mixture of 3% ethanol and 97% gasoline by volume). The assessment using the developed method revealed that, first, the complete shift from gasoline to E3 fuel allows for decreases in fossil fuel consumption and GHG emission. Second, the performance of the project is improved by the integration of the ethanol plant and the sugar factory. Moreover, the assessment found that, in small-scale bioethanol projects, the contribution of capital goods to life cycle fuel consumption and GHG emission is not negligible.     

Life cycle assessment analysis of active and passive acid mine drainage treatment technologies

Acid mine drainage (AMD), resulting from open-cast coal mining, is currently one of the largest environmental challenges facing the mining industry. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the construction, operation and maintenance of different AMD treatment options typically employed. LCA is a well-reported tool but is not documented for AMD treatment systems despite their ubiquitous implementation worldwide. This study conducted detailed LCA analysis for various passive and active AMD treatment approaches implemented or considered at a major coal mine in New Zealand using a comparative functional unit of kg acidity removed per day for each treatment option. Eight treatment scenarios were assessed including active limestone and hydrated lime treatments, and compared to passive treatments using limestone and waste materials such as mussel shells. Both midpoint and endpoint LCA impact categories were assessed. Generally, the active treatment scenarios demonstrated greater LCA impacts compared to an equivalent level of treatment for the passive treatment approaches. Lime slaking had the greatest LCA impacts, while passive treatment approaches incurred consistently less impacts except for one passive treatment with a purchased energy scenario. A 50% reduction in transportation distances resulted in the lowest LCA impacts for all scenarios. This study highlights the importance of evaluating the environmental and social impacts of AMD treatment for the mining industry.     

Environmental resource footprinting of drug manufacturing: Effects of scale-up and tablet dosage

The formulation and scale-up of batch processes is one of the major challenges in the development of pharmaceutical dosage forms and at the same time a significant resource demanding process which is generally overlooked in environmental sustainability assessments. First, this paper proposes general trends in the experience curve of cumulative resource consumption of pharmaceutical tablet manufacturing of PREZISTA^® 800 mg through wet granulation (WG) at four consecutive scales in both R&D and manufacturing environments (resp. WG1 = 1 kg/h, WG5 = 5 kg/h, WG30 = 30 kg/h and WG240 = 240 kg/h). Second, the authors aim at evaluating the environmental impact from a life cycle perspective of a daily consumption of PREZISTA^® 2× 400 mg tablets versus the bioequivalent PREZISTA^® 800 mg tablet which was launched to enhance patient compliance. Environmental sustainability assessment was conducted at three different system boundaries, which enables identification, localization and eventually reduction of burdens, in this case natural resource extraction. Exergy Analysis (EA) was used at process level (α) and plant level (β) while a cradle-to-gate Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) was conducted at the overall industrial level (γ) by means of the CEENE method (Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment). Life cycle stages taken into account are Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) production, Drug Product (DP) production and Packaging. At process level (α), the total resource extraction for the manufacturing of one daily dose of PREZISTA^® (800 mg tablet) amounted up to 0.44 MJ_ex at the smallest scale (WG1) while this amount proved to be reduced by 58%, 79% and 83% at WG5, WG30 and WG240 respectively. Expanding the boundaries to the overall industrial level (γ) reveals that the main resource demand is at the production of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), excipients, packaging materials and cleaning media used in DP production. At the largest scale (WG240) the use of cleaning media during DP production contributes considerably less to the total resource extraction. Overall, the effect of scale-up and learning on resource consumption during DP production showed to possess a power-law experience curve y = 2.40 * x^−0.57 when shifting from WG1 (smallest lab scale) to WG240 (industrial manufacturing). Tablet dosage (2× 400 mg versus 1× 800 mg) did not significantly affect the absolute environmental burden. However, the relative contribution of resource categories did change due to the different production technology. It could be concluded that in meeting social and economic demands by launching the PREZISTA^® 800 mg tablet, no trade-off in environmental burden occurred. On the long term, future research should strive to take into account R&D processes and all services related to pipeline activities taking place prior to market launch and eventually to allocate impacts to the final product.