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In recent times, there has been an indisputable need to move towards a more sustainable economy, known as a circular economy, which is basically aimed at reducing the consumption of newly extracted raw materials to manufacture products, and thus, reduces waste generation by recycling products beyond their useful life to ultimately close the economic flow of the product. For the economy generated by products to close the circle, it is essential to tackle the problem at the source, that is, the process to achieve the desired product should be conducted by designing the product with environmental criteria (eco-design) and analysing its life cycle from the extraction process to the point when it ends its useful life (LCA). This article presents an ECO + LCA methodology that provides designers with an easy way of visualising the effect of their design decisions on the final environmental impact of the product. This methodology was tested on a case study of a conventional desk, with four alternative scenarios presented and an assessment of their final impact with a cradle-to-grave perspective. The final design obtained reduces the environmental impact by more than 30% and reduces costs by more than 11%.

Natural stoppers are a magnificent closure for the production of aging wines and unique wines, whose application is limited by the availability of raw materials and more specifically of cork sheets of different thickness and quality. The growing demand for quality wine bottle closures leads to the search for alternative stopper production. The two-piece stopper is an alternative since it uses non-usable plates in a conventional way for the production of quality caps. The present study has analyzed the impact of the manufacture of these two-piece stoppers using different methodologies and for different dimensions by developing an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), concluding that the process phases of the plate, its boiling, and its stabilization, are the phases with the greatest impact. Likewise, it is detected that the impacts in all phases are relatively similar (for one kg of net cork produced), although the volumetric difference between these stoppers represents a significant difference in impacts for each unit produced.

This study incorporates the use phase in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of reinforced concrete structures that are composed of one-way slabs. Sustainable construction is one of the main future objectives of the European Union; therefore, useful and reliable tools will be necessary for its implementation. The usefulness of the LCA for the selection of structural alternatives depends on the data quality. The Environmental Product Declarations collect the production phase of building materials, but it is necessary to incorporate the particularities in the implementation and use phases. This work proposes a stage that considers the use phase in the structural part that does not belong to the building envelope and provides a methodology that reflects the characteristics of each climate zone where it is applied. All of the representative variables to define the structure of a building are combined: column grids, variations in the geometry of one-way slabs, and different materials. A discrete model that incorporates 360 cases is constructed to compare the reliability of the model with a study on real structure projects. The results show the importance of the use phase in residential buildings with respect to the effects generated during the other phases (production, execution and demolition), as well as its high variations, up to 140.4%.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools are often applied to the production stage of structural projects. This study aims to determine the sensitivity of the real environmental impact according to aspects related to decisions made during the execution stage. This stage includes factors that are beyond the control of the planner or designer: control over production (hourly yield, waste management), location of production facilities (transport of components to building location). The present study analyzes and evaluates three variables: distance travelled for component transport, working hours, and materials wasted during the production and construction process. Limit values are established according to six possible scenarios. Based on the results, it can be concluded that hourly yield had a minimal effect on the generated environmental impact. Transport and material waste, on the other hand, are the factors that brought about the greatest variations in environmental impact. For example, the components that are most sensitive to transport can decrease environmental impact by 65.66% or increase it by 18.24% depending on project location. And when considering material wasted during production and construction, the environmental impact varied from −9.77% to 9.78%.

Wine industries commonly use concrete and stainless-steel tanks in fermentation, but the selection of a container depends on factors such as price, installation costs, requirements, maintenance costs, and monitorability. However, nowadays environmental protection trends seek to care for the environment along the entire value chain, consequently, making industries more responsible for managing aspects, such as pollutant emissions, resource consumption, and energy consumption. This paper reports a comparative cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of the two most common types of containers for wine fermentation, i.e. stainless-steel tanks and concrete tanks. The present study estimates the environmental impact from building, installation, and dismantling of tanks to analyse the environmental impact from alcoholic fermentation and malolactic fermentation. Results indicate that building the tank – either out of concrete or stainless steel – has a high impact on the environment, for instance, in terms of global warming impact per liter of wine 6.03E-02 kg CO2 equivalent from steel tank or 1.31E-02 kg CO2 equivalent from concrete tank (ratio is 4.6). In addition, the building stage in a concrete tank has the highest environmental impact due to the concrete consumption and low recycling rate, while in stainless-steel tank, the fermentation stage is the highest environmental impact mainly due to direct CO2 emissions and because it has a high recycling rate.

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) through its Technical Committee CEN/TC-350 is developing a series of standards for assessing the building sustainability, at both product and building levels. The practical application of the selection (decision making) of structural alternatives made by one-way slabs leads to an intermediate level between the product and the building. Thus the present study addresses this problem of decision making, following the CEN guidelines and incorporating relevant aspects of architectural design into residential construction. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is developed in order to obtain valid information for the decision making process (the LCA was developed applying CML methodology although Ecoindicator99 was used in order to facilitate the comparison of the values); this information (the carbon footprint values) is contrasted with other databases and with the information from the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) of one of the lightening materials (expanded polystyrene), in order to validate the results. Solutions of different column disposition and geometries are evaluated in the three pillars of sustainable construction on residential construction: social, economic and environmental. The quantitative analysis of the variables used in this study enables and facilitates an objective comparison in the design stage by a responsible technician; the application of the proposed methodology reduces the possible solutions to be evaluated by the expert to 12.22% of the options in the case of low values of the column index and to 26.67% for the highest values.

"In the process of red wine aging, the barrel plays a fundamental role both in the contribution of aromas and in the stabilization of the wine and its color. There are, however, different types of barrels, depending on materials, species and origin of the oak, morphology and geometry, and capacity (from 225 liters to larger formats of 300 and 500 liters). The purpose of this work is to perform the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of these barrel formats and compare them with the 225-liter Bordeaux barrel, providing detailed information on these products that can serve as a reference for their use in the calculation of the impact of its application in the wine aging processes. We will consider, for the realization of the present LCA, all the phases of process and manufacture of the barrel that cover from the contribution of materials and their processing until the final storage."

When wood comes into contact with wine, organoleptic properties valued in oenology are generated, which are lost over time and barrels use, so alternative processes are currently used into old barrels as adding wood chips, sticks and staves for keep those properties; however, the environmental and economic impact of the use of these alternatives is not known. This article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis for those common alternative process used for keep organoleptic properties, but using barrels additives from Quercus alba and Quercus petraea wood. The ISO 14040 standard is employed for the LCA in Simapro® software, making use of the CML-IA baseline V3.04/EU25 methodology and for the economic analysis the production cost is used. The results indicate that aggregating wood chips to recover the organoleptic properties on wine is the alternative that generates less environmental impact and the least expensive, while the highest environmental impact and cost are produced when using wood slaves. On the other hand, additives from Quercus alba wood are less expensive and present low environmental impact in relation to those from Quercus petraea.

The useful lifetime of a residential building is at least 50 years according to Spanish law; the decisions to be made in year zero (in construction terms) must be conditioned by the defined phase of use for the building on the one hand, and on the other hand by cautious estimates about the availability of resources for such use. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that models the impact of any product, process or service from the very beginning up to the end. This paper presents an optimization of the selection of slab alternatives in residential buildings, based on modelling and simulation of the costs and environmental impact (using the LCA with Ecoindicator'99 methodology) of all the alternatives with valid behaviour (according with the national laws).

Throughout this chapter, a methodology of analysis of the environmental impact generated by a wind turbine has been presented, based on previous works of the research group composed of the authors. From the results obtained, an important conclusion is the significant impact generated by the turbine blades and, especially, their non-recycling status. Here is found a need for further research into recycling processes of this type of material (Pickering, 2006; Cunliffe et al., 2003; Marco de et al., 1997; Torres et al., 2000; Williams et al., 2005; Vallee et al., 2004; Perrin et al., 2006), as well as for their practical application in the final dismantling and waste treatment phases of wind turbines. Another material that presents a significant impact within the study is the copper (Lunt et al., 2002; Norgate & Rankin, 2000) present in the nacelle of the turbine, but in this case with the advantage of being a recyclable material (Norgate et al., 2007). In any case, although there are components with a significant environmental impact within the turbine, it has also been verified that these impacts are much smaller than those generated by conventional power plants in operation, with reductions in the impact about 95%, depending on the category. In addition, the energy payback time (time regarding the energy required to produce and implement a turbine) is less than one year, much smaller than the useful lifetime of the system, which is at least 20 years. Moreover, the different uncertainties arising from the options given during the development of the LCA of a wind turbine have been analysed throughout this work. Five different scenarios within the LCA of a multimegawatt wind turbine have been analysed. In addition, the impact that these scenarios may present on the final LCA has also been assessed. From the results can be clearly emphasized the specific case of large corrections in the maintenance phase. Undoubtedly, the choices made at the turbine maintenance stage have an important effect on the results of the LCA. Therefore it is necessary to analyse and define more precisely the average of major corrections that may experience a model of wind turbine along its 20 years of life. Another issue that significantly influences the final results of the LCA study of the multi-megawatt wind generator in question is the considerations made about recycling and reuse of components and materials. A clear example is the impact of materials such as the fibreglass of the blades of the wind turbine when they are not recycled but sent directly to landfill. Finally, seven LCIA methods have also been compared in relation to different impact categories, and significant discrepancies have been found in the results. Furthermore, some of these methods may not consider impact categories that are currently debated, which may be relevant to the LCA study being conducted. On many occasions, a LCA practitioner may simply select a LCIA methodology provided as part of a LCA software tool. In these cases, the impact category, indicator and model selection, and classification have been preselected for the user. This is appealing from the practitioner's point of view since it is faster and less costly. However, it must be noted and