Pere Fullana

Use of Life Cycle assessment in the procedure for the establishment of environmental criteria in the catalan ECO-label of leather

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to detect the environmental ‘hot spots’ in the chrome-tanned bovine leather industry. We have studied those stages in the life cycle of leather, which occur ‘from cradle to gate’. The production chain studied starts with the agricultural products (fertiliser and pesticide production is also included) needed for cattle raising, it is followed by the slaughterhouse, and ends at the tanning industry gate. Main chemicals and waste flows in and out of this chain have also been included in the analysis. One of the main conclusions is that the tannery is an important stage in most of the impact categories, mainly due to the landfilling of the tannery wastes. Agriculture and — to a lesser extent — cattle raising also play a very important role in most of the impact categories; the former, due to the related energy consumption and use of fertilisers, and the latter due to the emissions associated with animal care. The Autonomous Government of Catalonia is using the results of this study to establish the environmental criteria that a leather product must fulfil in order to attain the Catalan eco-label.

Application of life cycle assessment to landfilling

A case study of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is performed concerning the treatment of household solid wastes in a landfill. The stages considered in this LCA study are: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis and impact assessment. The data of the inventory include the consumption of raw materials and energy through the transport of wastes and the management of landfill, and the corresponding emissions to the environment. Abiotic resource depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicological impacts have been considered as impact categories for the impact assessment phase of the LCA. A comparison of the environmental impact of the landfilling with and without energy recovery is carried out.

Application of life cycle assessment to footwear

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied in the leather footwear industry. Due to the fact that the goal of the study is to point those steps in the footwear cycle which contribute most to the total environmental impact, only a simplified semi-quantitative methodology is used. Background-data of all the inputs and outputs from the system have been inventoried. Impact assessment has been restricted to classification and characterisation. From the results of this LCA it has been concluded that energy consumption is an important impact generator phase, due to the characteristics of the electricity production in the studied area (Catalonia and the rest of Spain). A remarkable impact is generated in the solid waste management phase, also due to its characteristics in the studied area. Another significant impact source is the cattle raising phase where great values of Global Warming, Acidification and Eurrophication Potentials are estimated. At the tannery, a great value of water eutrophication potential is observed and this phase is also important for its non-renewable resource consumption.

Life cycle assessment modelling of waste-to-energy incineration in Spain and Portugal.

In recent years, waste management systems have been evaluated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. A main shortcoming of prior studies was the focus on a mixture of waste with different characteristics. The estimation of emissions and consumptions associated with each waste fraction in these studies presented allocation problems. Waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration is a clear example in which municipal solid waste (MSW), comprising many types of materials, is processed to produce several outputs. This paper investigates an approach to better understand incineration processes in Spain and Portugal by applying a multi-input/output allocation model. The application of this model enabled predictions of WTE inputs and outputs, including the consumption of ancillary materials and combustibles, air emissions, solid wastes, and the energy produced during the combustion of each waste fraction.

Waste management under a life cycle approach as a tool for a circular economy in the canned anchovy industry

The anchovy canning industry has high importance in the Cantabria Region (North Spain) from economic, social and touristic points of view. The Cantabrian canned anchovy is world-renowned owing to its handmade and traditional manufacture. The canning process generates huge amounts of several food wastes, whose suitable management can contribute to benefits for both the environment and the economy, closing the loop of the product life cycle. Life cycle assessment methodology was used in this work to assess the environmental performance of two waste management alternatives: Head and spine valorisation to produce fishmeal and fish oil; and anchovy meat valorisation to produce anchovy paste. Fuel oil production has been a hotspot of the valorisation of heads and spines, so several improvements should be applied. With respect to anchovy meat valorisation, the production of polypropylene and glass for packaging was the least environmentally friendly aspect of the process. Furthermore, the environmental characterisation of anchovy waste valorisation was compared with incineration and landfilling alternatives. In both cases, the valorisation management options were the best owing to the avoided burdens associated with the processes. Therefore, it is possible to contribute to the circular economy in the Cantabrian canned anchovy industry.

An update on the liaison of the two LCA-planets: 11th SETAC Europe Annual Meeting, 6–10 May 2001 in Madrid, Spain

The SETAC Europe Annual Meeting was hosted in the friendly Madrid Congress Hall, right by Madrids most famous and passionate venue, the Santiago Bernabeu soccer stadium of Real Madrid. More than 1350 participants came to the conference, with up to 150 people attending the LCA presentations. The meeting offered stimulating LCA sessions and controversial discussions as well as a taste of Spanish culture and cuisine. A good overview of recent avd ongoing activities in LCA and related fields in Europe, and to a lesser extent, in America and Japan was given. For the first time we had LCA key-note speakers: ROi~Nb Cub-r, who gave an interesting talk on how to approach the modeling of industrial ecology, and Aal Hum-Abx, who introduced the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, which was one of the main LCA topics during the conference. In addition, we enjoyed 118 LCA contributions (56 platform presentations and 62 posters), which we think made this SETAC meeting the biggest LCA event ever. Most of the SETAC LCA working groups met and a LCA short course was offered on Sunday to more than 20 students. To complete the statistics with local data, the growing Spanish LCA community had the annual meeting of the Spanish LCA Society and contributed with 3 platform presentations and 15 posters from 10 different organizations. As a change from past annual meetings there was more emphasis on applications. This resulted in a good combination of research in the purely scientific field (mainly LCIA) and in the area of applied research and development (LCM, etc.). Also, as the number of participants was very high, this event facilitated many bilateral meetings. In fact, some EU LCA research project consortia used the event to meet. In the following report an attempt is made to give an overview of the six sessions dealing with LCA and related issues: 9 Goal & scope definition: data quality & uncertainty in LCA (9 platforms and 10 posters) 9 Life cycle inventory after 14041: new developments in modeling (9 platforms and 4 posters) 9 Advances in life cycle impact assessment: water & other issues (12 platforms and 12 posters) 9 LCA & comparative risk assessment (6 platforms and 4 posters)

Life cycle modelling of a handicraft sector: the anchovy canning industry in Cantabria (Northern Spain)

Abstract This paper presents a methodology which combines the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the mathematical programming and optimization. LCA was applied using the environmental sustainability assessment (ESA) methodology to obtain two main indicators: natural resources (NR) and environmental burdens (EB) that are further minimized. The optimization of these variables will allow to obtain the best environment performance of the system, since the methodology includes specific, local and global features of the process under study. This procedure was applied to a handicraft sector, in particular, to the anchovy canning industry in Cantabria (Northern Spain).

Combined application of Life Cycle Assessment and linear programming to evaluate food waste-to-food strategies: Seeking for answers in the nexus approach

The great concern regarding food loss (FL) has been studied previously, but in an isolated way, disregarding interdependencies with other areas. This paper aims to go a step further by proposing a new procedure to assess different waste management alternatives based on the nexus approach by means of an integrated Water-Energy-Food-Climate Nexus Index (WEFCNI). The environmental profile of the waste management techniques is determined using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which, in combination with Linear Programming (LP), explores the optimal aggregation of weighting factors that lead to an aggregated nexus index. The management of residues from the anchovy canning industry in Cantabria (Spain) has been used as a case study, considering the three current applied alternatives: (i) valorisation of FL as animal feed in aquaculture (food waste-to-food approach), (ii) incineration of FL with energy recovery, and (iii) landfilling with biogas recovery. The last two considered the use of energy recovered to produce a new aquaculture product (food waste-to-energy-to-food scenarios). The results indicate that incineration is the best performing scenario when the nutritional energy provided by the valorisation alternative is not high enough and the valorisation technology presents the highest water consumption. Therefore, a minimisation in the consumption of natural resources is suggested in order to improve the application of circular economy within the sector. The use of the nexus index as an environmental management tool is extendable to any food system with the aim of facilitating the decision-making process in the development of more sustainable products.

Introducing the Green Protein Footprint method as an understandable measure of the environmental cost of anchovy consumption

In a global framework of growing concern for food security and environmental protection, the selection of food products with higher protein content and lower environmental impact is a challenge. To assess the reliability of different strategies along the food supply chain, a measure of food cost through the environmental impact-protein content binomial is necessary. This study proposes a standardized method to calculate the Green Protein Footprint (GPF) index, a method that assesses both the environmental impact of a food product and its protein content provided to consumers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to calculate the environmental impact of the selected food products, and a Life Cycle Protein Assessment (LCPA) was performed by accounting for the protein content along the supply chain. Although the GPF can be applied to all food chain products, this paper is focused on European anchovy-based products for indirect human consumption (fishmeal) and for direct human consumption (fresh, salted and canned anchovies). Moreover, the circular economy concept was applied considering the valorization of the anchovy residues generated during the canning process. These residues were used to produce fishmeal, which was employed in bass aquaculture. Hence, humans are finally consuming fish protein from the residues, closing the loop of the original product life cycle. More elaborated, multi-ingredient food products (salted and canned anchovy products), presented higher GPF values due to higher environmental impacts. Furthermore, the increase of food loss throughout their life cycle caused a decrease in the protein content. Regarding salted and canned products, the packaging was the main hotspot. The influence of the packaging was evaluated using the GPF, reaffirming that plastic was the best alternative. These results highlighted the importance of improving packaging materials in food products.

Addressing decision-making in the process industry using life cycle approach coupled to Linear Programming: A case study on anchovy canning industry in Cantabria Region (Northern Spain)

Abstract The main objective of Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies is to support decision-making in environmental sustainable production and consumption. Nevertheless, stake-holders are often forced to choose among several environmental profiles, comprised by a wide range of environmental categories for each alternative. The variety of metrics may hinder the decision-making process, especially when there is no scenario scoring better than the rest in every metric simultaneously. Aggregated indexes can simplified this task by defining attached weights to impacts. Moreover, environmental decisions are usually subjected to economy costs, since production processes are embedded into the product system value. This work proposes a methodology that combines LCA and life cycle cost (LCC) to linear programming in order to define a composite eco-efficiency index. Our model is subjected to optimization to determine a valid range of weighting factors within which the solutions are potentially optimal. This approach is applied to the anchovy canning sector and allows the translation into economic terms of the environmental damage caused when a given alternative is chosen.