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Abstract In recent decades, the debate on how to implement and measure sustainability in food production gained increasing importance and interest for agriculture. In the wine sector, producers are increasingly pursuing sustainable practices, including measures for water preservation from degradation and overuse. But methodologies for assessing and communicating the impacts on water resources need to be understood in detail to guide the selection of the most appropriate management practices, support environmental labelling and promote environmental-friendly products to consumers. This work focuses on the impacts on water resources associated with the production of Italian wine by comparing two methodologies: the Water-focused Life Cycle Assessment and the "Water" indicator included in the Italian "VIVA" certification framework, which is based on the Water Footprint Assessment. The two methodologies address the impact on freshwater consumption and degradation from a life cycle perspective. VIVA is based on a water balance method that reflects a volumetric measure of water consumption, while the LCA-based approach investigates both the freshwater consumption and depletion using different impact indicators. The study goal is to compare the two methodologies to understand how their outcomes can support and improve the management of water-related issues in wine production. One main conclusion is that the WATER indicator within VIVA framework can provide more precise recommendations for the optimal management of water use during the vineyard phase, while LCA approach highlights impact hotspots related to both direct and indirect use of water resources (e.g., it points out the relevant contribution of the bottling stage to different impact indicators). The comparative application of both methodologies can provide useful insights into the water-related impacts of different wine production processes and stages and support a comprehensive assessment of the best management practices, unless the differences in the methodological approaches and goals are well understood by assessors. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • VIVA WATER indicator helps identifying optimal water management measures in vineyard stage. • Water-focused LCA supports a better interpretation in the cellar and bottling phases. • Wine production sustainability can benefit from the synergic application of different WF methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon Footprint (CF) is an environmental indicator used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that allows measuring the total amount of CO2 emissions caused directly or indirectly by an activity or accumulated through the life cycle stages of a product (ISO 14064-14067). In this article CF was used to analyse and assess the environmental impacts of the resources used for the collection of municipal solid waste by the company Contarina S.p.A. Contarina oversees waste management for part of the Treviso province (Italy), serving about 260,000 appliances in 50 municipalities distributed in the territory. The presented case study assessed CF of year 2015 related the whole fleet involved in door-to-door collection of municipal solid waste without taking into account treatment processes. In addition, a future scenario, in which part of the current fleet is replaced by compressed natural gas engine (CNG) based vehicles, was assessed and compared to the current status. The CF was performed by adapting the SimaPro software from PRè, one of the most widely used LCA software since the nineties, by introducing fuel based analysis and creating CNG lorries. The analysis aimed at improving sustainability of Contarina's services while fostering an informed development and testing of new technologies aimed at reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper advances a conceptualization of sustainability in urban regeneration as communicative practice taking place within networks of social actors. To demonstrate the potential of this perspective, we propose an interdisciplinary methodology integrating social network analysis from sociology and multi-criteria decision analysis (fuzzy logic) from operations research to calculate a sustainability communicator score for each actor involved in a regeneration network. The score is based on three dimensions: a sustainability vision (relying on the three pillar model of sustainability), a formal network influence dimension (based on organizational practice and decision-making position) and an informal network influence dimension (drawing on degree, betweenness, eigenvector and closeness centrality measures from social network analysis). The framework allows the identification and ranking of sustainability communicators, based on the preferences of specific users, while also allowing for variable degrees of vagueness. We illustrate the methodology by means of a case study of a social network of actors (N = 28) involved in the sustainable regeneration of a brownfield site in Porto Marghera, Venice, Italy. The methodology is expandable beyond the actor level to allow for the ranking of more complex network configurations for promoting sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The case study focuses on sustainable and organic farming concepts. • The study analyzes sustainability of a conventional and an organic vineyard management. • Sustainability analysis includes impact on the ecosystem and on the human capital. The wine sector is paying more attention to sustainable wine production practices, but this topic is highly debated because organic viticulture aims to a reduction of environmental impacts, while conventional viticulture ensures an increase of yield. This work provides an economic and environmental comparison using different indicators whereas no previous studies on viticulture have faced on both aspects of sustainability. Two distinct vineyards within the same case study farm were considered, where conventional and organic viticulture practices were applied for 5 years. For each type of production, we calculated the economic benefit and environmental indicators such as the Water Footprint, Carbon Footprint, and an indicator of environmental performance associated with the vineyard phase ("Vineyard Management" or "Vigneto" indicator part of the Italian VIVA certification framework). This latter considers six sub-indicators investigating pesticides management, fertilizers management, organic matter content, soil compaction, soil erosion, and landscape quality. The multi criteria approach is a novel framework assessing sustainability on vineyard management using environmental indicators from VIVA calculator and the economic aspect. Main results showed that organic management in viticulture can be applied without having economic losses and with the benefit of better preserving the natural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]