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Purpose: Packaging can be a critical aspect in the environmental performance of pharmaceutical products; however, few life cycle assessment studies were implemented for pharmaceutical packaging. The main goal is to assess the environmental life cycle impacts of different types of pharmaceutical packaging for medicines commercialized in pharmacies in Europe, aiming at identifying hotspots and opportunities for packaging improvement and providing recommendations. Methods: A life cycle model was implemented for three types of pharmaceutical packaging (blisters, sachets, and bottles) most commonly sold in community pharmacies in Europe. The system boundary includes packaging production, assembly, and distribution to pharmacies. Twenty-three packaging alternatives, with different sizes and materials, have been analyzed. Distribution scenarios considering alternative production locations (Europe, Asia, the USA) and transport modes (truck, train, airplane, ship) have been assessed. The functional unit is the storage and delivery of medicines containing the same active pharmaceutical ingredient, dosage, and amount of medicines. Primary data were collected from the pharmaceutical sector. The life cycle impact assessment has been performed for five categories: global warming, abiotic depletion-fossil fuels, acidification, ozone depletion, and eutrophication. Results and discussion: There is a high variation of impacts within the alternative packaging for the same medicine, being more significant for blisters (up to five times) than for bottles and sachets. Production of materials is the highest contributor. The use of aluminum presents very high impacts, particularly for acidification, while PVC has significant impacts for fossil fuel depletion. PVC is the forming film that presented the lowest environmental impacts, followed by PVC/PVDC and OPA/Alu/PVC. Truck transportation impacts are more significant for larger-size packaging, due to the amount of packaging transported being limited by volume rather than weight. Train and ship presented better environmental performance. Conclusions: There is a great potential for ecodesign improvement in pharmaceutical packaging, particularly for blisters. There is a great potential for ecodesign improvement in pharmaceutical packaging, particularly for blisters, which should use PVC for the forming film and are preferable to sachets. Packaging with compact formats, avoiding empty spaces, and superfluous elements are recommended, which lead to a reduction of environmental impacts and production costs. Selecting means of transport with lower environmental impacts is highlighted, as the volume-limited capacity of vehicles is a critical hotspot for lightweight packaging. Lastly, recommendations are provided for the pharmaceutical packaging sector in Europe (and worldwide). The importance of LCA-based ecodesign is highlighted, providing directions for pharmaceutical stakeholders and future regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport sector is highly dependent on fossil fuels with significant environmental impacts. This motivates the environmental assessment of alternative fuel options, including biodiesel based on agricultural crops. The assessment of biofuel alternatives for transportation can be facilitated by the integration of Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). In this article, we compare four Rapeseed Methyl Ester biodiesel production chains, corresponding to four different feedstock origins. The environmental impact of each chain is assessed in the context of a LCA encompassing cultivation, transportation to Portugal, extraction and transesterification. We apply two different MCDA additive aggregation methodologies to aggregate various impact categories resulting from the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) phase of the LCA. The chosen MCDA methodologies, Stochastic Multicriteria Analysis and Variable Interdependent Parameter Analysis, are two complementary approaches to address one of the main difficulties of MCDA: setting the relative weights of the evaluation criteria. Indeed, weighting the various impacts in the LCIA phase is a controversial issue in LCA research and studies. The LCIA–MCDA approach proposed in this work does not require choosing a specific weighting vector, seeking to assess which conclusions are robust given some freedom allowed in the choice of weights. To study further the robustness of the conclusions concerning the choice of the criteria, the effects of removing one criterion are analyzed, one at a time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The environmental impacts of electricity generation are a critical issue towards sustainability and thus an important research topic in several countries. The life cycle assessment methodology has been widely employed to assess electricity generation. However, there are still gaps in research to be explored within this theme. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a systematic theoretical analysis of the state of the art of the scientific research on LCA of electricity generation systems in the world. Methods: A critical review of 47 studies was conducted. The study is comprehensive in the analysis of the main aspects of the identified high impact studies as follows: authors, countries, universities, keywords, journals, number of citations, life cycle impact assessment methods, impact categories, software tools, and databases. The Methodi Ordinatio was applied to rank the studies in terms of impact factor and number of citations, pointing out high impact research. Results and discussion: Wind and solar powers have two of the smallest impact indices in their generation in terms of global warming, compared to other sources. The ecoinvent database was the most used among the studies analyzed, providing data for potential environmental impacts. The most frequently used impact category in the assessments was climate change. The studies are not equally distributed but most of them are concentrated in European countries. In some countries, clean sources seem promising due to their capacity to generate electricity in places with high wind incidence and high capacity for sunlight capture. Conclusions: The conclusions of this article summarize the characteristics of existing literature and provide suggestions for future work. The results of the study can also be used to promote development actions and foment changes in energy matrices in a global context. The main studies in this area point that in the future, the main sources for electricity generation will be renewable ones, since life cycle assessment of electricity generation systems has been seeking to generate knowledge to support informed decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Screening social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) can be applied to identify the social hotspots associated with a production activity or supply chain. The objective of this paper is to explore how the quality of the results of a screening S-LCA can be improved, illustrated by a case study of sugarcane production in Brazil, an activity which has been criticized for its records on social sustainability due to issues such as poor working conditions for field workers and treatment of migrant workers. Methods: Cradle-to-gate production of sugarcane in Brazil has been modeled using input-output analysis. The associated social impacts have been modeled using the framework of the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB), which is one of the first databases providing information on social risks along supply chains. The results from the SHDB were complemented with results from a systematic analysis of relevant literature. Content analysis was applied to 38 publications in English relevant to the social impacts of sugarcane production in Brazil, including peer-reviewed articles, "gray literature," non-governmental organization reports, and conference presentations. Qualitative data analysis software NVivo 8 was used to facilitate the analysis of the publications. A deductive category system was established based on the subcategories recommended in the UNEP/SETAC social life cycle assessment guidelines. Social impacts were further aggregated and analyzed by social themes and impact categories. Results and discussion: The social impacts of the sugarcane life cycle in Brazil arise almost exclusively within the Brazilian sugarcane sector itself. Fifteen social themes are identified as hotspots in the SHDB, and nine of them are also identified by content analysis. Health and safety and labor rights and decent work are the impact categories with the highest risks. Besides negative impacts, content analysis is capable of identifying several positive impacts related to sugarcane production. Due to the use of aggregated country-level data, social impacts of manual and mechanical harvesting of sugarcane cannot be differentiated in SHDB; however, this can be achieved by content analysis. Conclusions: SHDB is effective for identifying social impacts at the country level, but the data are inevitably aggregated and only show averages across different technologies and geographical areas; therefore, the database is of limited value in distinguishing between alternative operations and locations. Content analysis can facilitate foreground data collection by differentiating operations and identifying both negative and positive impacts at the level of individual activities. We recommend that S-LCA databases can be integrated with results of content analysis to improve the richness—representativity and specificity—of results from a screening S-LCA, to differentiate between alternative production routes and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Concerns about environmental impacts and health effects associated with particulate matter emissions of sugarcane production in Brazil have been raised, mainly due to pre-harvest burning of straw in manual harvesting. In consequence, mechanical harvesting without burning has been increasingly adopted. Life cycle studies have assessed environmental impacts of sugarcane and sugarcane products. However, incorporating health effects of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) in a life cycle assessment focusing on evaluating the impacts of increasing use of mechanization has not been conducted. This article compares the life cycle environmental and health impacts (with spatially differentiated characterization factors for PM2.5) of manual and mechanical harvesting of sugarcane in Brazil, and quantifies the health benefits due to the change of harvesting operations.Methods: An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of manual versus mechanical sugarcane harvesting was conducted to evaluate the impacts of 1 t of sugarcane at the distillery. ReCiPe was applied to characterize impacts at mid-point (i.e., climate change, fossil depletion, ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, and particulate matter formation) and end point (i.e., human health, ecosystems, and resources). Impacts on climate change were compared considering different soil carbon sequestration scenarios. Characterization factors (CFs) of health effects of PM2.5 for Brazil were calculated differentiating emission sources, population densities, and burdens of disease.Results and discussion: At the mid-point, sugarcane production with manual harvesting has higher impacts on photochemical oxidant formation and particulate matter formation mainly due to pre-harvest burning. Mechanical harvesting system may lead to higher impacts on fossil depletion, ozone depletion, and terrestrial acidification resulting from higher use of fertilizers and diesel. Differences of impacts on climate change between two systems vary depending on the soil carbon sequestration scenario. At the end-point level, manual harvesting has higher impacts on human health but lower impacts on resource use. The health effects of PM2.5 vary considerably with population density. Changing from manual to mechanical harvesting close to urban areas leads to a 93% reduction of health effects, while for rural only 15% and for remote areas 5%. When considering average population density, the health effects of PM2.5 of manual harvesting were approximately six times higher than mechanical harvesting. Health effects of PM2.5 calculated with ReCiPe are much lower and may underestimate the effects of primary PM2.5 emissions.Conclusions: The results of this article are an incentive to accelerate the mechanization of sugarcane harvesting in areas with lower mechanization levels (i.e., north-northeast region in Brazil and some rough terrain areas) concerning public health benefits. Meanwhile, manual harvesting with straw burning should only be performed in fields located in rural or remote areas. These results can also contribute to further studies comparing potential benefits of sugarcane culture with alternative crops and guide better decision making at regional development level. Spatially differentiated CFs of PM2.5 calculated in this article may be applied to future studies regarding health effects in the Brazilian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The use of high levels of thermal insulation is a common practice towards reducing the energy consumption of the existing building stock; however, the embodied burdens associated with the additional insulation material are usually not taken into account and questions regarding the risks of over-specifying the insulation levels have been emerging, particularly for mild climate regions. This article addresses the issue presenting an integrated approach that combines life cycle assessment and thermal dynamic simulation to assess alternative retrofit strategies for the roof and exterior walls of two dwellings (from the beginning of the twentieth century), in the historic city center of Coimbra, Portugal. A comprehensive analysis of alternative insulation thicknesses (no insulation, 40, 80, and 120 mm of expanded polystyrene) was made to identify optimal thickness levels minimizing life cycle (LC) environmental impacts for a single-family house and an apartment. Methods: Embodied and operational impact trade-offs were calculated for six impact categories: climate change, ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, and non-renewable primary energy. The operational energy was calculated using a dynamic thermal modeling software (EnergyPlus). The functional unit selected for this study was 1 m of living area over a period of 50 years. Results and discussion: The single-family house embodied impacts account for 26-57 % of total LC impacts. For insulation thicknesses larger than 80 mm, the embodied impacts are greater than operational impacts. For the apartment, embodied impacts account for 25-49 % of total LC impacts. The environmental benefits of additional insulation are very low (<3 %) for thicknesses of more than 80 mm for both roof and exterior walls. For thicknesses above the tipping point (where total LC impacts are minimized), the marginal impacts of additional insulation are higher than the benefits. The results for the apartment show that optimal insulation thicknesses (LC tipping point) range from 30 to 40 mm for the roof and from 60 to 80 mm for the exterior walls. The LC tipping point for the single-family house is achieved by combining 80-100 mm of roof insulation with 60-80 mm of exterior wall insulation. Conclusions: Extra insulation levels in temperate climates can lead to higher embodied impacts, without significant reduction in operational impacts, which can result in higher total LC impacts. The results show that a tipping point can be identified, and recommendations are provided for the roof and exterior wall retrofits of buildings from the beginning of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Palm biodiesel life cycle studies have been mainly performed for Asia and focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity. The purpose of this article is to present an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of biodiesel produced in Portugal from palm oil (PO) imported from Colombia, addressing the direct effects of land-use change (LUC), different fertilization schemes, and biogas management options at the extraction mill. Methods: An LC inventory and model of PO biodiesel was implemented based on data collected in five Portuguese biodiesel plants and in a palm plantation and extraction mill in the Orinoquía Region of Colombia. The emissions due to carbon stock changes associated with LUC were calculated based on the Colombian oil palm area expansion from 1990 to 2010 and on historical data of vegetation cleared for planting new palm trees. Five impact categories were assessed based on ReCiPe and CML-IA methods: GHG intensity, freshwater and marine eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, terrestrial acidification. A sensitivity analysis of alternative allocation approaches was performed. Results and discussion: Palm plantation was the LC phase which contributed the most to eutrophication and acidification impacts, whereas transportation and oil extraction contributed the most to photochemical oxidation. An increase in carbon stock due to LUC associated with the expansion of Colombian oil palm was calculated (palm is a perennial crop with higher carbon stock than most previous land-uses). The choice of the fertilization scheme that leads to the lowest environmental impacts is contradictory among various categories. The use of calcium ammonium nitrate (followed by ammonium sulfate) leads to the lowest acidification and eutrophication impacts. The highest GHG intensity was calculated for calcium ammonium nitrate, while the lowest was for ammonium sulfate and poultry manure. Biogas captured and flared at the oil extraction mill instead of being released into the atmosphere had the lowest impacts in all categories (GHG intensity reduced by more than 60 % when biogas is flared instead of released). Conclusions: Recommendation on the selection of the fertilization scheme depends on the environmental priority. ReCiPe and CML showed contradictory results for eutrophication and photochemical oxidation; however, uncertainty may impair strong recommendations. GHG intensity and photochemical oxidation impacts can be significantly reduced if biogas is flared instead of being released. However, more efficient biogas management should be implemented in order to reduce the impacts further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector is the goal of several current policies and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are seen as one option to achieve this goal. However, the introduction of BEVs in the fleet is gradual and their benefits will depend on how they compare with increasingly more energy-efficient internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). The aim of this article is to assess whether displacing ICEVs by BEVs in the Portuguese light-duty fleet is environmentally beneficial (focusing on GHG emissions), taking into account the dynamic behavior of the fleet. Methods: A dynamic fleet-based life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the Portuguese light-duty fleet was performed, addressing life-cycle (LC) GHG emissions through 2030 across different scenarios. A model was developed, integrating: (i) a vehicle stock sub-model of the Portuguese light-duty fleet; and (ii) dynamic LC sub-models of three vehicle technologies (gasoline ICEV, diesel ICEV and BEV). Two metrics were analyzed: (i) Total fleet LC GHG emissions (in Mton CO eq); and (ii) Fleet LC GHG emissions per kilometer (in g CO eq/km). A sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the influence of different parameters in the results and ranking of scenarios. Results and discussion: The model baseline projected a reduction of 30-39 % in the 2010-2030 fleet LC GHG emissions depending on the BEV fleet penetration rate and ICEV fuel consumption improvements. However, for BEV introduction in the fleet to be beneficial compared to an increasingly more efficient ICEV fleet, a high BEV market share and electricity emission factor similar or lower to the current mix (485 g CO eq/kWh) need to be realized; these conclusions hold for the different conditions analyzed. Results were also sensitive to parameters that affect the fleet composition, such as those that change the vehicle stock, the scrappage rate, and the activity level of the fleet (11-19 % variation in GHG emissions in 2030), which are seldom assessed in the LCA of vehicles. The influence of these parameters also varies over time, becoming more important as time passes. These effects can only be captured by assessing Total fleet GHG emissions over time as opposed to the GHG emissions per kilometer metric. Conclusions: These results emphasize the importance of taking into account the dynamic behavior of the fleet, technology improvements over time, and changes in vehicle operation and background processes during the vehicle service life when assessing the potential benefits of displacing ICEVs by BEVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Electric vehicles (EVs) are promoted due to their potential for reducing fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) between different technologies should account for variation in the scenarios under which vehicles are operated in order to facilitate decision-making regarding the adoption and promotion of EVs. In this study, we compare life-cycle GHG emissions, in terms of COeq, of EVs and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) over a wide range of use-phase scenarios in the USA, aiming to identify the vehicles with lower GHG emissions and the key uncertainties regarding this impact. Methods: An LCA model is used to propagate the uncertainty in the use phase into the greenhouse gas emissions of different powertrains available today for compact and midsize vehicles in the US market. Monte Carlo simulation is used to explore the parameter space and gather statistics about GHG emissions of those powertrains. Spearman's partial rank correlation coefficient is used to assess the level of contribution of each input parameter to the variance of GHG intensity. Results and discussion: Within the scenario space under study, battery electric vehicles are more likely to have the lowest GHG emissions when compared with other powertrains. The main drivers of variation in the GHG impact are driver aggressiveness (for all vehicles), charging location (for EVs), and fuel economy (for ICEVs). Conclusions: The probabilistic approach developed and applied in this study enables an understanding of the overall variation in GHG footprint for different technologies currently available in the US market and can be used for a comparative assessment. Results identify the main drivers of variation and shed light on scenarios under which the adoption of current EVs can be environmentally beneficial from a GHG emissions standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The wood panel industry is one of the most important forest-based industries in Brazil. The medium density particleboard (MDP) is currently produced and consumed worldwide and represents about 50 % of the wood panel industry in Brazil. Unlike other regions, Brazilian MDP is produced from dedicated eucalyptus plantations and heavy fuel oil is an important energy source in MDP manufacture, which may result in a different environmental profile. This paper presents a life cycle assessment of MDP panel produced in Brazil and suggests improvement opportunities by assessing alternative production scenarios. Methods: The cradle-to-gate assessment of 1 m of MDP produced in Brazil considered two main subsystems: forest and industrial production. Detailed inventories for Brazilian eucalyptus production and MDP industrial production were collected as a result of technical visits to Brazilian MDP producers (foreground systems) as well as literature review (mainly background systems). The potential environmental impacts of MDP were assessed in terms of seven impact categories using CML (abiotic depletion, acidification, global warming, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidation) and USEtox (ecotoxicity and human toxicity) impact assessment methods in order to identify the main hotspots. Results and discussion: The industrial production was responsible for most of the impacts in all impact categories, except ecotoxicity (EC). The main hotspots identified were the use of heavy fuel oil (HFO) as a thermal energy source in MDP manufacture and the production of urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin used as synthetic adhesive. Glyphosate herbicide application in soil in forestry operations was the main responsible for the impacts in EC. Scenarios for HFO substitution were assessed and results showed that substituting HFO for in-mill wood residues or diesel leads to reduced environmental impacts. Conclusions: The identification of the main hotspots in the MDP life cycle can assist the wood panel industry to improve their environmental profile. Further research should focus on UF resin production in order to reduce its environmental impacts as well as the possibility of using alternatives resins. Other sources of wood for MDP production could also be investigated (e.g., pine wood and wood residues) to assess potential improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake which was missed during typesetting. The figures of Graph 1 and Figure 6 were switched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicriteria aggregation methods typically require inputs from decision makers concerning the relative importance of the criteria. This work presents an approach to use qualitative information elicited from a panel, which can be applied to compensatory and non-compensatory multicriteria aggregation methods. In particular, it considers the additive multiattribute value function and ELECTRE, two classical methods with well-known differences in the meaning of the criteria weights. Moreover, the proposed protocol makes a distinction between the importance of improving the current situation and the importance of not worsening the current situation. The inputs from the panel are aggregated to define constraints on the importance-related parameters, which can then be used for robustness and stochastic analyses. As a real-world application, a comparison of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is performed, considering the case of carrots cultivation in a French region. The comparisons are based on a sustainability assessment of the current practices and alternative IPM systems, using data from field trials, laboratory experiments and preferences from stakeholders. Results are robust to weighting choices, thus identifying which changes are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]