Walter Klöpffer

Industrial ecology: Towards closing the material cycle

Introduction - material perspective resource perspective alumina, aluminium and gallium copper, cobalt, silver and arsenic chromium sources, uses and losses zinc and cadmium sulfur and sulfuric acid phosphorus, flourine and gypsum nitrogen-based chemicals the chlor-alkali sector electronic grade silicon (EGS) for semiconductors post-consumer packaging wastes scrap tires coal ash - sources and possible uses on industrial ecosystems. Appendices: Production and consumption data data sources for the study.

Life-Cycle based methods for sustainable product development

Sustainability-a term originating from silviculture, which was adopted by UNEP as the main political goal for the future development of humankind-is also the ultimate aim of product development. It comprises three components: environment, economy and social aspects which have to be properly assessed and balanced if a new product is to be designed or an existing one is to be improved. The responsibility of the researchers involved in the assessment is to provide appropriate and reliable instruments. For the environmental part there is already an internationally standardized tool: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the logical counterpart of LCA for the economic assessment. LCC surpasses the purely economic cost calculation by taking into account hidden costs and potentially external costs over the life cycle of the product. It is a very important point that different life-cycle based methods (including Social Life Cycle Assessment) for sustainablity assessment use the same system boundaries.

Analytical tools for environmental design and management in a systems perspective

Preface. Foreword. Part I: Demand and supply of environmental information. 1. Introduction. 2. Demands for environmental information. 3. Supply of environmental information for decision support. 4. Analytical tools. 5. Linking supply and demand concerning environmental information. 6. Concluding remarks. References. Part II: Cases and Appendices. A. Case Study: The supply, use and waste management chain of electronic consumer goods. B. Case Study: Towards reduced environmental burden of mobility: improving the automobile life cycle. C. Case Study: The supply, use and waste management of domestic clothes washing. D. Full description of tools. E. Inquiry on user preferences concerning analytical tools for environmental evaluation. F. List of definitions. G. Acronyms and abbreviations.

Allocation rule for open-loop recycling in life cycle assessment

Recycling of a product can lead to the same product or to other products. Within the Inventory Analysis of LCA, the first process is called closed-loop recycling and poses relatively small methodological problems, whereas the second, open-loop recycling, involves major allocation problems. Basically, open-loop recycling creates a new, larger system which should be treated as one system in the inventory analysis from a scientific point of view. Since this is frequently not possible, allocation rules have to be applied in order to treat one of the subsystems separately. In this review, the different allocation rules proposed are presented and discussed with respect to the criteria of mathematical neatness, feasibility and justice/incentive for both producers and users of secondary raw materials.

Life cycle assessment of contaminated sites remediation

For the federal state of Baden-Wiirttemberg, Germany, the decision tool “Umweltbilanz von Altlastensanierungsverfahren” has been developed and found suitable for the quantification and evaluation of environmental impacts caused by remediation of contaminated sites. The developed tool complements the remediation toolbox of Baden-Wiirttemberg. The tool includes a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) and a synopsis of the LCA results with the results of a risk assessment of the contaminated site. The risk assessment tool is not explained here. The data base for the life cycle inventory includes several techniques used in remedial actions. The life cycle impact assessment utilises 14 impact categories. The method allows comparisons between remedial options for specific contaminated sites. A software tool has been developed to be available in 1999.

The critical review of life cycle assessment studies according to ISO 14040 and 14044

PurposesThe revision of the ISO LCA (life cycle assessment) standards in October 2006 brought some changes of the critical review process compared to the older series ISO 14040–43 (1997, 1998, 2000a, b). Furthermore, the importance of LCA has grown rapidly in recent years, but this growth was not accompanied by a corresponding increase of knowledge about the voluntary and obligatory review processes. It is the intention of this paper to analyse the relevant standards and to present some personal experiences in conducting critical reviews.Results and discussionA peer review for LCA studies was first proposed in the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) guidelines “A Code of Practice” (1993). The ISO standard 14040 (1997) took up this proposition and described three types of “Critical review” which are optional in general, but mandatory “for LCA studies used to make a comparative assertion that is disclosed to the public”. This strong prescription was reinforced in the revised standards ISO 14040 and 14044 (2006a, b) and even stricter, unambiguous formulations were added to the text. In addition, the minimum number of experts in a “review by interested parties” is now three (including the chair). Large panels with more than four experts are rare, but do occur occasionally.RecommendationsOut of personal experience, I strongly support the interactive (accompanying) mode of conducting the critical review process (ISO also allows the “a posteriori” mode). I also suggest the removal of some inconsistencies during the next update of the standards. No major changes are recommended, however, since ISO 14040u2009+u200914044 has become the reference standard for several other international standards based on the life cycle concept.

The valuation step within LCA: Part I: General principles

Some basic principles required for the development of a valuation procedure in life cycle assessment are described. International human rights conventions and international environmental laws and conventions are analyzed for the usefulness in obtaining general principles for the valuation step of life cycle assessment. The human right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the conventions of the Earth Summit in Rio 1992, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer 1987, and other treaties and conventions are shown to be a suitable basis for the valuation.

The peer reviewing process — A case study

A Peer Review requires a careful checking of the whole procedure of LCA/LCI, including the quality of data, the system boundaries, the assumptions made and whether or not the method used is compatible with the goal of the study. Most importantly, is has to be ex-aminded whether the results and conclusions are in accord with the quality of the data and with the assumptions made. The Peer Review of the European Life Cycle Inventory for Surfactant Production was conducted between April 1994 and March 1995 and was performed according to the SF.TAC Guidelines (A“Code of Practice” 1993). The main recommendation by the Panel was the full publication of the study. The second main recommendation is to make an update of the database in regular intervals. The third recommendation concerns the format of the international energy database, which should be harmonized.The authors recommend that the procedure proposed by SF.TAC should be considered within the framework of the ISO LCA-standardization process.

How many case studies should we publish, if any?

Dear Readers, From the beginning, it has been the editorial policy of this journal that academic as well as applied life cycle assessment (LCA) studies be published (Klöpffer 1996). This concept has been very successful (as seen in the Journals increasing impact factor) and will not be changed in principle (Klöpffer et al. 2013), at least not in the foreseeable future. Papers based on academic studies, of course, contribute to the advancement of knowledge in LCA methodology. Papers based on applied LCA studies also bring value by covering a wide range of practical issues, from the application and testing of the methods developed in the academic field, to the application of established methods to specific product systems in “case studies.” It is this last point which is sometimes criticized as boring or lacking new information. Reinout Heijungs provided his thoughts on journals that publish papers that do not address methods and techniques, but merely employ them:

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)