Marta Herva

An approach for the application of the Ecological Footprint as environmental indicator in the textile sector

The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a recent concept which has widely been used as an indicator of environmental sustainability applied to individual lifestyles, regions, nations or even the world. Recently, its application to enterprises has been proposed. In the present study, a textile tailoring plant has been analysed. The overall purpose of this study was to develop a tool useful for evaluating the environmental impact evolution due to the performance of the plant, as well as for comparing the environmental behaviour of different tailoring processes. Therefore, the selected data were those from the manufacturing work. Data were divided in three main categories: energy, resources and waste. The principal contribution to the final EF (expressed in hectares of land) was the resources category, mainly due to the high value associated to the cloth. The consumed energy was the second contributor, while the waste category remained in third place. The final outcomes were divided by the production rates to obtain a comparable relative index, easy to be interpreted by the different stakeholders. This is of special importance for a Company involved in Corporate Social Responsibility and thus meant to have a general communication strategy.

Inventory of heavy metal content in organic waste applied as fertilizer in agriculture: evaluating the risk of transfer into the food chain

Background, aim, and scopeIn this work, an environmental risk assessment of reusing organic waste of differing origins and raw materials as agricultural fertilizers was carried out. An inventory of the heavy metal content in different organic wastes (i.e., compost, sludge, or manure) from more than 80 studies at different locations worldwide is presented.Materials and methodsThe risk analysis was developed by considering the heavy metal (primarily Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) concentrations in different organic residues to assess their potential environmental accumulation and biotransfer to the food chain and humans. A multi-compartment model was used to estimate the fate and distribution of metals in different environmental compartments, and a multi-pathway model was used to predict human exposure.ResultsThe obtained hazard index for each waste was concerning in many cases, especially in the sludge samples that yielded an average value of 0.64. Among the metals, Zn was the main contributor to total risk in all organic wastes due to its high concentration in the residues and high biotransfer potential. Other more toxic metals, like Cd or Pb, represented a negligible contribution.ConclusionsThese results suggest that the Zn content in organic waste should be reduced or more heavily regulated to guarantee the safe management and reuse of waste residues according to the current policies promoted by the European Union.

Application of fuzzy logic for the integration of environmental criteria in ecodesign

The ecodesign of a product implies that different potential environmental problems of diverse nature must be considered, apart from the general design criteria (i.e., technical, functional, ergonomic, aesthetic or economical). In this sense, an ecodesign tool integrating the criteria provided by three environmental evaluation methodologies, namely Ecological Footprint (EF), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), has been constructed on the basis of fuzzy logic reasoning and features. This idea enabled the decision making at process and product level taking into account the values of the different indicators at a time. The relative importance of each of them has been established through the definition of membership functions as inputs to the fuzzy inference reasoning procedure in the case of a specific product. As a result, a Fuzzy EcoDesign Index (FEcoDI) was obtained. A well known case study was used to test the tool. Different packaging materials for a beverage bottle were considered to identify the most environmentally friendly option.

Sustainable and safe design of footwear integrating ecological footprint and risk criteria.

The ecodesign of a product implies that different potential environmental impacts of diverse nature must be taken into account considering its whole life cycle, apart from the general design criteria (i.e. technical, functional, ergonomic, aesthetic or economic). In this sense, a sustainability assessment methodology, ecological footprint (EF), and environmental risk assessment (ERA), were combined for the first time to derive complementary criteria for the ecodesign of footwear. Four models of childrens shoes were analyzed and compared. The synthetic shoes obtained a smaller EF (6.5 gm(2)) when compared to the leather shoes (11.1 gm(2)). However, high concentrations of hazardous substances were detected in the former, even making the Hazard Quotient (HQ) and the Cancer Risk (CR) exceed the recommended safety limits for one of the synthetic models analyzed. Risk criteria were prioritized in this case and, consequently, the design proposal was discarded. For the other cases, the perspective provided by the indicators of different nature was balanced to accomplish a fairest evaluation. The selection of fibers produced under sustainable criteria and the reduction of the materials consumption was recommended, since the area requirements would be minimized and the absence of hazardous compounds would ensure safety conditions during the use stage.

Combined application of energy and material flow analysis and ecological footprint for the environmental evaluation of a tailoring factory.

Two environmental evaluation methodologies, namely energy and materials flow analysis (EMFA) and ecological footprint (EF), were combined to assess a tailoring factory that produced jackets in the period 2002-2005. During the EMFA, aided by the software Umberto(®) 5.5, cutting was identified as the most energy consuming stage and gas-oil as an important source of pollution in spite of its low contribution to energy supply. The EF appraisal was built on the basis of a previous work, incorporating methodological contributions developed by the authors that made the indicator more suitable for its application at corporate level. Initially, an increasing tendency in the indicator was observed (from 37.8 in 2002 to 45.2 gm(2)/jacket in 2005). When including other emissions apart from CO(2), the results conveyed a significant increase in EF that ranged from 80% in 2002 to 14% in 2004, demonstrating that this contribution should not be disregarded when evaluating production processes. Finally, sensitivity analyses were carried out to assess the influence in the EF of the variability in input variables. When emissions were not included, the most influencing input flow was the cotton fabric; otherwise gas-oil became the most relevant factor. Therefore, its substitution for cleaner sources of energy was advised.

Multicorrelation models and uptake factors to estimate extractable metal concentrations from soil and metal in plants in pasturelands fertilized with manure.

Environmental risk assessment (ERA) is a useful methodology to estimate the possible adverse effects to human health due to contaminants exposure. In the case of agricultural scenarios, this method requires knowing the concentrations of contaminants in soil solution and vegetation, among other parameters. This study aimed to develop multicorrelation models to estimate metal extractable from soil as a function of total metal concentration in soil and soil properties in a cattle manure application scenario. It also aimed to estimate metal concentrations in plant by soil-plant uptake factors (UF). All the multicorrelation models obtained were significant, ranging R(2) values from 0.44 for Cd to 0.92 for Cu. Soil-plant UF were an adequate method for the estimation of metal concentration in plant, since the relationship between the soil-plant UF and the extractable metal concentration from soil was significantly described by a power model, for all the heavy metals.

A decision support system based on fuzzy reasoning and AHP-FPP for the ecodesign of products

An Ecodesign Index (EcoInd) is proposed to integrate the information coming from Environmental Risk Assessment and Ecological Footprint.A decision support system (DSS) integrating the criteria provided by the environmental indicators was developed based on Fuzzy Preference Programming method and fuzzy logic reasoning.The developed DSS is very useful to aid the ecodesign of products.The DSS was tested with the ecodesign of footwear as case study. The design stage represents one of the most critic steps for product development. Here, a great number of considerations have to be borne in mind, e.g., technical, functional, aesthetic or economic criteria. More recently, the increasing concerns on environmental aspects have added complexity to the process, known as ecodesign. In this respect, a framework to integrate the criteria provided by quantitative environmental indicators has been proposed on the basis of Fuzzy Preference Programming method features and fuzzy logic reasoning. As a result, an integrated Ecodesign Index (EcoInd) is obtained. This idea enables the decision making at process and product level taking into account different indicators at a time. The ecodesign of childrens footwear was taken as case study and an ecodesign tool (decision support system) that included the estimation of environmental indicators and their integration was developed. Different models of shoes were analyzed to identify the most environmentally friendly design and to test the tool. In this case, the Ecological Footprint and two Environmental Risk Assessment indicators, namely Hazard Quotient and Cancer Risk, were selected as relevant environmental indicators and they were computed from data provided by a shoes manufacturer. Then, these indicators were integrated in the ecodesign tool and the EcoInd values were appraised for the childrens footwear models analyzed. According to these figures, they were ranked as Red LeatherWhite LeatherWhite SyntheticPink Synthetic, from best to worst.