| 1. |
- Peters, Greg, et al.
(författare)
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LCA on fast and slow garment prototypes
- 2018
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report summarises the environmental assessment work done in the Mistra Future Fashion program focussed on the potential to improve the environmental performance of garments and adapt them to a circular economy. The approaches examined in this report include reducing the environmental impacts from fast-fashion trends by making garments from paper-based materials, or by extending garment life cycles.This assessment considers two paper-based garments. One is made primarily from paper pulp but enhanced with a polylactic acid polymer. This garment is worn between two to five times before being recycled as newspaper. The other fast garment is made of paper pulp, polylactic acid and nanocellulose. It has a similar life cycle but is composted after use life. These garments are compared with a standard t-shirt. The report also considers a slow-paced scenario in which a polyester garment passes between several owners and is regularly changed to maintain its appeal. It is updated with a transfer sublimation overprint three times, making the garment darker each time. Later it is joined with an outer shell of new material using laser technology to make a cropped, box-cut jacket.The assessment was performed using environmental life cycle assessment. More particularly, the assessment was based on attributional process analysis with cutoff allocation procedures and comparison with a traditional reference garment life cycle. Key environmental effect categories considered here include climate change (greenhouse gas emissions), freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity and human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer).The results indicate that the environmental outcomes of the paper-based garments can be competitive with the reference garment, particularly when the user is assumed to throw away a fully functional reference garment after five uses. This assumption may be true for some users, but the number of uses is considerably lower than the typical or the potential lifespan of the reference garment. The main factor assisting the paper-based garments is the reduction in the impacts per mass associated with material manufacturing (fibres, spinning, knitting), and also their lighter masses. Avoided impacts in the use phase play a secondary role on account of their location in Sweden with its low-carbon energy mix. The long-life garments are also competitive compared with their reference garments. This is primarily a consequence of how extending garment life avoids the production of new garments. The environmental impacts associated with transfer sublimation dye reprinting and laser processing do not significantly impact the overall environmental performance of the extended longlife garments, though confidentiality of data prevents a full assessment of these.The garments in this report are pilot products and explorative scenarios rather than attempts to model existing business or behavioural patterns. The reader should therefore take care to keep the results in context when interpreting them. Nevertheless, the results suggest the value of pursuing the potential associated with these garment life cycles. We should also bear in mind that while the reference garments in this assessment are based on typical usage patterns, other more sustainable patterns are feasible.
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| 2. |
- Bellon-Maurel, V., et al.
(författare)
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Streamlining life cycle inventory data generation in agriculture using traceability data and information and communication technologies - Part II: Application to viticulture
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 87:1, s. 119-129
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural systems are increasingly subjected to environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) but generating life cycle inventory (LCI) data in agriculture remains a challenge. In Part I, it was suggested that traceability data are a good basis for generating precise LCI with reduced effort, especially when collected by efficient information and communication technologies (ICTs). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate this for wine grape production and generate a list of data to be collected for streamlined LCI generation. The study is carried out in the South of France, on a viticultural farm implementing electronic traceability of each cultivation operation, i.e. tillage, fertilisation, crop protection, weeding, canopy management and harvesting (no irrigation is needed at this vineyard). For each operation, specific emission models which satisfy the trade-off between accuracy and need for data have been identified. Traceability data must be supplemented with data related to the plot, equipment and inputs to feed the models. The sensitivity of the LCA outputs to plot soil type and year of cultivation was studied. Consistent with previous agricultural studies, the results show that operations such as pesticide spraying and fertilising have large environmental impacts in this Mediterranean vineyard. Notable variations occur in life cycle impact assessment indicators, principally due to variations in crop yield; however, the influence of secondary factors such as soil type and agricultural practices is also evident and this contribution allows us to better characterise the variability of grape production and to show that streamlined LCI can be created using traceability data. Ultimately, this paper delivers two results. It provides simple models, and relevant data and methodology to enable viticultural LCAs to be undertaken. Additionally, it demonstrates that accurate LCIs can be built based on data already collected for traceability when supplemented with other easily collectable data (weather and farm structural data). Overall, this work paves the way for streamlined LCI in agriculture.
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| 3. |
- Hall, Patrik, et al.
(författare)
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Greening the Street-Level Procurer: Challenges in the Strongly Decentralized Swedish System
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Consumer Policy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0168-7034 .- 1573-0700. ; 39:4, s. 467-483
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article investigates the every-day street-level practice of green public procurement (GPP) in Sweden, a country with one of the most decentralized systems of public administration within the European Union (EU). The street-level procurement officers in Swedish local and regional government are in charge of purchases estimated to represent between 10% and 15% of Sweden’s GDP. This article examines the constraining and enabling factors behind the individual procurement officer’s choice of green procurement in textiles and clothing through a combination of qualitative interviews and a review of documentary sources. The analysis shows that while indirect support through European and national soft regulation and policy advice is imperative for “greening” procurement, the direct factors which influence the local outcome of GPP comprises factors on the local level: political commitment and environmental knowledge, the organizational structure of local government and the local interpretation of the regulatory framework. This study shows that a decentralized structure has possibilities of furthering ambitions of buying green if there are committed politicians and public officials, an optimal level of internal centralisation and an external support structure of knowledge and enabling rules. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Heimersson, Sara, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Including Pathogen Risk in Life Cycle Assessment of Wastewater Management. 2. Quantitative Comparison of Pathogen Risk to Other Impacts on Human Health
- 2014
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Ingår i: Environmental Science & Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 48:16, s. 9446-9453
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Resource recovery from sewage sludge has the potential to save natural resources, but the potential risks connected to human exposure to heavy metals, organic micropollutants, and pathogenic microorganisms attract stakeholder concern. The purpose of the presented study was to include pathogen risks to human health in life cycle assessment (LCA) of wastewater and sludge management systems, as this is commonly omitted from LCAs due to methodological limitations. Part 1 of this article series estimated the overall pathogen risk for such a system with agricultural use of the sludge, in a way that enables the results to be integrated in LCA. This article (part 2) presents a full LCA for two model systems (with agricultural utilization or incineration of sludge) to reveal the relative importance of pathogen risk in relation to other potential impacts on human health. The study showed that, for both model systems, pathogen risk can constitute an important part (in this study up to 20%) of the total life cycle impacts on human health (expressed in disability adjusted life years) which include other important impacts such as human toxicity potential,global warming potential, and photochemical oxidant formation potential.
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| 6. |
- Peters, Gregory, 1970, et al.
(författare)
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Improving odour assessment in LCA - the odour footprint
- 2014
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Ingår i: International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1614-7502 .- 0948-3349. ; 19:11, s. 1891-1900
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose Odour is an important aspect of systems for humanand agricultural waste management and many technologiesare developed with the sole purpose of reducing odour.Compared with greenhouse gas assessment and the assessmentof toxicity, odour assessment has received little attentionin the life cycle assessment (LCA) community. This articleaims to redress this.Methods Firstly, a framework for the assessment of odourimpacts in LCA was developed considering the classicalLCA framework of emissions, midpoint and endpoint indicators.This suggested that an odour footprint midpoint indicatorwas worth striving for. An approach to calculating an arealindicator we call “odour footprint”, which considers the odourdetection threshold, the diffusion rate and the kinetics ofdegradation of odourants, was implemented in MATLAB.We demonstrated the use of the characterisation factors wecalculated in a case study based on odour removal technologyapplied to a pig barn.Results and discussion We produced a list of 33 linear characterisation factors based on hydrogen sulphide equivalents, analogous to the linear carbon dioxide equivalency factors in use in carbon footprinting, or the dichlorobenzene equivalency factors developed for assessment of toxic impacts in LCA. Like the latter, this odour footprint method does not take local populations and exposure pathway analysis into account—its intent is not to assess regulatory compliance or detailed design. The case study showed that despite the need for materials and energy, large factor reductions in odour footprint andeutrophication potential were achieved at the cost of a smaller factor increase in greenhouse emissions.Conclusions The odour footprint method is proposed as animprovement on the established midpoint method for odourassessment in LCA. Unlike it, the method presented hereconsiders the persistence of odourants. Over time, we hopeto increase the number of characterised odourants, enablinganalysts to perform simple site-generic LCA on systems withodourant emissions.
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| 7. |
- Short, M, et al.
(författare)
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Municipal gravity sewers: an unrecognised source of nitrous oxide
- 2014
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 468-469, s. 211-218
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) is a primary ozone-depleting substance and powerful greenhouse gas. N 2 O emissions from secondary-level wastewater treatment processes are relatively well understood as a result of intensive international research effort in recent times, yet little information exists to date on the role of sewers in wastewater management chain N 2 O dynamics. Here we provide the first detailed assessment of N 2 O levels in the untreated influent (i.e. sewer network effluent) of three large Australian metropolitan wastewater treatment plants. Contrary to current international (IPCC) guidance, results show gravity sewers to be a likely source of N 2 O. Results from the monitoring program revealed hydraulic flow rate as a strong driver for N 2 O generation in gravity sewers, with microbial processes (nitrification and possibly denitrification) implicated as the main processes responsible for its production. Results were also used to develop a presumptive emission factor for N 2 O in the context of municipal gravity sewers. Considering the discrepancy with current IPCC Guidelines, further work is warranted to assess the scale and dynamics of N 2 O production in sewers elsewhere. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.
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