The widespread use of single-use polypropylene packaging for sterilization of surgical instruments (blue wrap) results in enormous environmental pollution and plastic waste, estimated at 115 million kilograms on a yearly basis in the United States alone. Rigid sterilization containers (RSCs) are a well-known alternative in terms of quality and price. This paper deals with two research questions investigating the following aspects: (A) the environmental advantage of RCS for high volumes (5000 use cycles) in big hospitals, and (B) the environmental break-even point of use-cycles for small hospitals. An in-depth life cycle assessment was used to benchmark the two sys-tems. As such a benchmark is influenced by the indicator system, three indicator systems were ap-plied: (a) carbon footprint, (b) ReCiPe, and (c) eco-costs. The results are as follows: (1) the analyzed RSC has 85% less environmental impact in carbon footprint, 52% in ReCiPe, and 84.5% in eco-costs; and (2) an ecological advantage already occurs after 98, 228, and 67 out of 5000 use cycles, respec-tively. Given these two alternative packaging systems with comparable costs and quality, our results show that there are potentially large environmental gains to be made when RSC is preferred to blue wrap as a packaging system for sterile surgical instruments on a global scale.

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LCAs of electric cars and electrolytic hydrogen production are governed by the consumption of electricity. Therefore, LCA benchmarking is prone to choices on electricity data. There are four issues: (1) leading Life Cycle Impact (LCI) databases suffer from inconvenient uncertainties and inaccuracies, (2) electricity mix in countries is rapidly changing, year after year, (3) the electricity mix is strongly fluctuating on an hourly and daily basis, which requires time‐based allocation approaches, and (4) how to deal with nuclear power in benchmarking. This analysis shows that: (a) the differences of the GHG emissions of the country production mix in leading databases are rather high (30%), (b) in LCA, a distinction must be made between bundled and unbundled registered electricity certificates (RECs) and guarantees of origin (GOs); the residual mix should not be applied in LCA because of its huge inaccuracy, (c) time‐based allocation rules for renewables are required to cope with periods of overproduction, (d) benchmarking of electricity is highly affected by the choice of midpoints and/or endpoint systems, and (e) there is an urgent need for a new LCI database, based on measured emission data, continuously kept up‐to‐date, transparent, and open access.

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This research optimizes the environmental impact of a conventional building foundation in Northern Europe while considering the economic cost. The foundation is composed of piles and ground beams. Calculations are performed following relevant building Eurocodes and using life cycle assessment methodology. Concrete and steel accounted for the majority of the environmental impact of foundation alternatives; in particular, steel on piles has a significant influence. Selecting small sections of precast piles or low-reinforcement vibro-piles instead of continuous-flight auger piles can reduce the environmental impacts and economic costs of a foundation by 55% and 40%, respectively. However, using precast beams rather than building them on site can increase the global warming potential (GWP) by up to 10%. Increasing the concrete strength in vibro-piles can reduce the eco-costs, ReCiPe indicator, and cumulated energy demand (CED) by up to 30%; the GWP by 25%; and the economic costs by up to 15%. Designing three piles instead of four piles per beam reduces the eco-costs and ReCiPe by 20–30%, the GWP by 15–20%, the CED by 15–25%, and the costs by 12%. A Pareto analysis was used to select the best foundation alternatives in terms of the combination of costs and eco-burdens, which are those with vibropiles with higher concrete strengths (low reinforcement), cast in situ or prefabricated beams and four piles per beam.

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In search of sustainable business models, product innovation must fulfil a double objective: the new product must have a higher (market) value, and at the same time a lower eco-burden. To achieve this objective, it is an imperative that the value, the total costs of ownership, and the eco-burden of a product are analysed at the beginning of the design process (idea generation and concept development). The design approach that supports such a design objective, is called Eco-efficient Value Creation (EVC). This approach is characterised by a two-dimensional representation: the eco-burden at the y-axis and the costs or the value at the x-axis. The value is either the Willingness to Pay or the market price. The eco-burden is expressed in eco-costs, a monetised single indicator in LCA (Life Cycle Assessment): an app for IOS and Android, and excel look-up tables at the internet, enable quick assessment of eco-costs. A practical example is given: the design of a new concept of domestic street lighting system for the city of Rotterdam. This new concept results in a considerable reduction of carbon footprint and eco-costs, and shows the benefits for the municipality and for the residents, resulting in a viable business case.

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The availability of resources is crucial for the socio-economic stability of our society. For more than two decades, there was a debate on how to structure this issue within the context of life-Cycle assessment (LCA). The classical approach with LCA is to describe "scarcity" for future generations (100-1000 years) in terms of absolute depletion. The problem, however, is that the long-term availability is simply not known (within a factor of 100-1000). Outside the LCA community, the short-term supply risks (10-30 years) were predicted, resulting in the list of critical raw materials (CRM) of the European Union (EU), and the British risk list. The methodology used, however, cannot easily be transposed and applied into LCA calculations. This paper presents a new approach to the issue of short-term material supply shortages, based on subsequent sudden price jumps, which can lead to socio-economic instability. The basic approach is that each resource is characterized by its own specific supply chain with its specific price volatility. The eco-costs of material scarcity are derived from the so-called value at risk (VAR), a well-known statistical risk indicator in the financial world. This paper provides a list of indicators for 42 metals. An advantage of the system is that it is directly related to business risks, and is relatively easy to understand. A disadvantage is that "statistics of the past" might not be replicated in the future (e.g., when changing from structural oversupply to overdemand, or vice versa, which appeared an issue for two companion metals over the last 30 years). Further research is recommended to improve the statistics.

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This paper deals with an analysis of waste management practices in the fast-growing city of Gujranwala with 2.6 million inhabitants, with a fast growing middle income group of 56%, and an urbanization rate of 3.49% per annum. This city is like many other cities in the developing world, characterised by hardly any waste management infrastructure. The study comprises: (1) an inventory of current waste flows, per income group as well as per season, (2) an inventory of waste management shortcomings, (3)) a what-if analysis on the carbon footprint of three waste treatment techniques. The inventory of current waste flows is based on a comprehensive site study involving 776 samples in total. The waste management shortcomings have been qualitatively analysed by Wasteaware model, which deals with physical aspects (public health, environmental control, resource management) as well as governance factors (user & provider inclusivity, financial stability, institutions & policies). The what-if analysis of the carbon footprint has been based on an LCA-based tool. The findings of this study are that: (1) the optimum choice of waste treatment scenario differs for the seasons, (2) the high and middle income groups have nearly half of the share of the waste (3) the Wasteaware system appears to be a powerful tool to communicate the weak spots and to make stakeholders aware of the opportunities for improvement. The novelty of this paper is that it focused on the impact of household income groups in combination with seasonal differences while comparing different waste disposal scenarios.

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Desulphurization of oil-based fuels is common practice to mitigate the ecological burden to ecosystems and human health of SO_x emissions. In many countries, fuels for vehicles are restricted to 10 ppm sulphur. For marine fuels, low sulphur contents are under discussion. The environmental impact of desulphurization processes is, however, quite high: (1) The main current source for industrial hydrogen is Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), with a rather high level of CO₂ emissions, (2) the hydrotreating process, especially below 150 ppm, needs a lot of energy. These two issues lead to three research questions: (a) What is the overall net ecological benefit of the current desulphurization practice? (b) At which sulfphur ppm level in the fuel is the additional ecological burden of desulphurization higher than the additional ecological benefit of less SO_x pollution from combustion? (c) To what extent can cleaner hydrogen processes improve the ecological benefit of diesel desulphurization? In this paper we use LCA to analyze the processes of hydrotreatment, the recovery of sulphur via amine treating of H₂S, and three processes of hydrogen production: SMR without Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), SMR with 53% and 90% CCS, and water electrolysis with two types of renewable energy. The prevention-based eco-costs system is used for the overall comparison of the ecological burden and the ecological benefit. The ReCiPe system was applied as well but appeared not suitable for such a comparison (other damage-based indicators cannot be applied either). The overall conclusion is that (1) the overall net ecological benefit of hydrogen-based Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel is dependent of local conditions, but is remarkably high, (2) desulphurization below 10 ppm is beneficial for big cities, and (3) cleaner production of hydrogen reduces eco-cost by a factor 1.8-3.4.

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The application of environmental strategies requires scoring and evaluation methods that provide an integrated vision of the economic and environmental performance of systems. The vector optimisation, ratio and weighted addition of indicators are the three most prevalent techniques for addressing this need.

The vector optimisation evaluates the original indicators independently in a dominance check. No real integration is performed, as the method seeks the optimisation of both indicators at once. This technique reveals
win-win situations and can also identify, but not solve, the trade-off situations involved in economy versus ecology.

The ratio method establishes a relation among the original indicators. This concept is suitable when one dimension has to be optimised against the other. A number of conceptual problems in the definition of the sense of direction of the ratio method make its interpretation ambiguous.

The weighted-addition provides a fair evaluation of the integrated performance of a system, with regard to the decision-maker's preference for ecology and economy. This is crucial to reconcile trade-offs between conflicting criteria. Special attention must be paid to the selection and definition of weighting factors, being a source of potential inconsistencies.@en

Calculating the environmental benefits of energy saving systems in dwellings in a life cycle assessment (LCA) has two major issues, namely: how to deal with the customer behaviour and how to deal with rebound effects. Both issues are important for sustainable strategies. From a user-centred design perspective, two fundamentally different strategies are observed, namely: a ‘passive’ end-user, who invests in insulating the building and maintaining their preferred behaviour routines, versus an ‘active’ end-user; who must change his or her behaviour in order to save energy. A combined analysis of cost, (market) value, and eco-burden is used to compare and evaluate the two strategies; by applying the methods of eco-costs/value ratio (EVR) and eco-efficient value creation. Simulation software is applied to calculate the results for the active end-user approach (by means of home energy management systems [HEMS]). The energy savings for a passive user approach (applying thermal insulation) are calculated with straightforward heat loss calculations. The rebound effect of energy savings is taken into consideration. From the environmental point of view, the optimal insulation thickness is calculated, by comparing the energy savings with the environmental burden of the insulation materials. This analysis shows that HEMS are effective for poorly insulated houses, but not for well insulated houses. Governmental policies that focus only on insulation, however, lack the urgency of greenhouse gas reduction; the HEMS for existing houses is an indispensable tool for a fast transition to less domestic energy consumption.@en

Although most people claim to prefer a more sustainable product, only a limited number of ‘green buyers’ act on their words at the moment of purchase. To find out how to get mainstream buyers to buy more sustainable products, we used data on 950 Western European buyers of 32 different vacuum cleaner models. The issue was why three out of four consumers bought a less sustainable high input power model when an energy-efficient model with equal specifications was also on offer at the same price. Only 6% of buyers bought their vacuum cleaner for environmental reasons. The remaining 94% of buyers stated that their purchase decision was mainly based on reliability, durability, key features, the brand and value for money, regardless of whether they bought an energy-efficient or -inefficient model. The 73% who bought energy-inefficient vacuum cleaners opted for heavier models (perceived as more robust) featuring bags for dust collection, and were more sensitive to messages addressing technological innovation. Beside energy-efficiency legislation, we see two options to encourage mainstream consumers to buy more energy-efficient products: (1) link technical advancement in innovation to lower power (‘we can create more suction with less energy’) in product branding, and (2) seduce mainstream consumers with models that are redesigned for performance, robustness and durability. With this quantitative consumer research, we add both to the knowledge of buying behaviour in terms of sustainability as well as to the knowledge on how to redesign and market green products in mainstream markets.@en

Eco-efficient Value Creation is a method to analyse innovative product and service design together with circular business strategies. The method is based on combined analyses of the costs, market value (perceived customer value) and eco-costs. This provides a prevention-based single indicator for ‘external environmental costs’ in LCA. The remanufacturing of products is an environmental and sustainable approach, in the circular economy, and can deliver lower eco-costs of materials depletion and pollution. From a business point of view, however, remanufacturing seems to be viable in B2B niche markets only. In consumer markets, remanufacturing is less common. The question is how can remanufacturing become a viable business solution for mainstream consumer markets. Traditional ‘green’ marketing approaches are not enough: green has a positive, but also negative connotations, so marketing approaches are complex. By using the Eco-efficient Value Creation method, marketing strategies for the roll-out of remanufacturing in mainstream consumer markets, can be revealed. This approach has led to the development of five aspects, which are key to innovative circular business models, for remanufacturing: (1) buyers differ from the buyers of the ‘new product’ (2) quality must be emphasised in all communications (3) risk must be taken away from the buyer (4) top level service is required to convince the buyer (5) a ‘green’ brand may support the remanufactured product image.

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The purpose of this study is to benchmark production processes and production chains of clothing products, by means of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). In this paper we present the socio-economic costs (s-eco-costs) method for monetisation of external socio-economic burden for workers. The method is applied to six cases of garment production chains. The s-eco-costs are the marginal prevention costs to reach a sustainable level (the Performance Reference Point, PRP) for wages and are the monetary compensation costs beyond the PRP to account for unacceptable exploitation of workers. The s-eco-costs (in €) include five sub-indicators, proposed as a base-line for several social issues in S-LCA: - Minimum Acceptable Wage (based on minimum wages in rich countries and statistics on economic migrants)- Child Labour (forced labour, not able to attend school)- Extreme Poverty (derived from World Bank absolute poverty line)- Excessive Working Hours (forced labour, involuntary)- Occupational Safety and Health (based on statistics of ILO)These s-eco-costs have been calculated for cotton T-shirts and pairs of jeans for three garment production chains: USA-Europe (Western ‘W’); India-Bangladesh (Asian ‘A’); China/India-Bangladesh (Asian Best Practice ‘ABP’), revealing the hotspots in these chains, and enabling benchmarking. The total results for the s-eco-costs of T-shirts are: W = € 0.05; A = € 1.46 and ABP = € 0.33. The results for the jeans are: W = € 0.38; A = € 12.56 and ABP = € 2.67. The most important hotspots are in the cotton fields in India and the garment production phase in Bangladesh. The authors hope that the proposed system will inspire others in the field of S-LCA to proceed with the development of quantitative indicator systems.

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There is a need for metrics to analyse complex business models in the circular economy. Life cycle assessment (LCA) currently is the best defined system to analyse the environmental aspects, and is capable to analyse circular systems, Product Service Systems, and systems for recycling. However LCA falls short of analysis of the added value of business models. Since new sustainable business models are part of the transition towards a circular economy, there is a need for combined analyses of value and ecoburden. This paper applies the LCA-based Eco-costs Value Ratio (EVR) Model to analyse potential negative environmental effects of business initiatives on a system level, and to provide a theoretical approach to the design of sustainable business models by means of a three dimensional approach of costs, eco-costs and market value. Two methods are applied for analysis and design: Eco-efficient Value Creation (EVR
benchmarking) and the Circular Transition Framework (describing stakeholder activities which are required for the transition towards sustainable business models). The practical case of the analysis, design and implementation of a business model for sustainable water recreation in Friesland (a province in the Netherlands) is used to validate the usefulness of these two LCA-based methods.
The conclusion is that the approach of Eco-efficient Value Creation helps to avoid many pitfalls of the design of circular business models (e.g. having a positive result on product level, but having a negative effect on societal level; having a positive effect on the environment but having insufficient customer
perceived value to overcome fierce market competition). The Circular Transition Framework reveals pitfalls and opportunities in implementation (e.g. the coordination between business models and governmental policies).@en

In the global climate agreements made during COP 21 in Paris, the role of forests and wood products have gained more attention considering their important impact – both negative and positive – through deforestation, forest conservation, afforestation and increasing application of wood in durable (construction) products acting as carbon sink. A promising route enabling legally and sustainably sourced non-durable temperate wood species to be used in high performance applications is through large scale non-toxic wood modification, of which acetylation is one of the leading methods. Acetylation has proven to enhance the resistance against fungal decay and dimensional stability of wood such that on commercially base two heavy load-bearing traffic bridges have been constructed. In this paper a cradle-to-grave assessment is executed to compare the environmental impact of acetylated Scots pine, tropical hardwood (Azobe) and non-renewable materials (steel, concrete) with the bearing structure of a typical pedestrian bridge as unit of comparison (‘functional unit’) The results show that acetylated wood has a considerably lower carbon footprint than steel, concrete and unsustainably sourced Azobe, and like sustainably sourced Azobe can have CO2 negative LCA results over the full life cycle.@en

This report presents the results of a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis of a selection of industrial bamboo products that are manufactured by the company MOSO International. The analysis was done to determine the impact that their production and disposal have on the environment. Bamboo !ooring, decking, panels and beams have been evaluated. A comprehensive explanation is o"ered of how carbon sequestration can be calculated, following LCA methodology. This LCA is speci#c to the product evaluations described in this report and is not applicable to other manufacturers’ products. The assessment described here is done for the production (cradle-to-gate) plus the waste (end-of-life) stages of the bamboo products, but does not include the user stage, when the product is in use by consumers after purchase. Bamboo products are increasingly found in western markets, with recorded international trade of some $2 bn in 2012, the majority of which is imported to European and North American consumer countries. As bamboo products are increasingly perceived as “green” and environmentally friendly, it is important to have an e"ective way to evaluate and verify these claims – to reassure producers and consumers, and help producers #nd ways to make their production system even “greener”. The LCA is a widely used and recognized method for achieving this. This study shows that if production parameters are optimised, these industrial bamboo products can have a negative carbon footprint over their full life-cycle, from cradle to grave. This means that the credits gained through carbon sequestration, and from burning to produce electricity in a power plant at the end of each product’s life, outweigh the emissions caused by the production and transport processes. At end-of-life, it is assumed that 90% of the bamboo products are incinerated in an electrical power plant and 10% will end-up in land#ll, a realistic scenario for Western Europe. The LCA was done following International standards ISO 14040 and 14044. In addition, the capture and storage (sequestration) of CO2 has been taken into account. It is hoped that the analysis described here will inform and encourage other bamboo producers to do similar life-cycle analyses of their production systems, to better understand where they can focus investments to reduce the environmental impacts of their products. It also aims to inform policy-makers about the sustainability of bamboo products, to encourage them to specify the use of this resource in national and international policies and investment plans.@en

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the commonly accepted methodology to systematically assess the environmental impact of a material over the full life cycle, from the extraction of resources until the end phase of demolition or recycling (from cradle till grave). The first objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the environmental impact of industrial bamboo products and its production process in terms of their CO2 equivalent (carbon footprint), toxic emissions, and materials depletion (LCA). The LCA in this paper is based on latest (2015) production and bamboo land-use change figures. The second objective of this paper is to clarify how carbon sequestration on a global scale can be defined and calculated for industrial bamboo products, and how they can be incorporated in the standard LCA calculations. The study concludes that industrial bamboo products, if based on best-practice technology (production chain of MOSO International BV), even when used in Europe, are CO2 negative over their full life cycle. @en

It is the main task of a professional designer to create value for the users of the products, services, and systems they design. In Design for Sustainability, however, designers have a higher level of ambition: additional to a high consumer value, they make sure that designs result in less degradation of our environment, less depletion of materials, and more social equity in our world. The need for a higher level of prosperity for people in developing countries, in combination with the growing population in our world, emphasizes the need for sustainable products and services. Design for Sustainability combines a high customer value with a low level of eco-burden over the life cycle. This chapter summarizes the main current approaches to Design for Sustainability (cradle-to-cradle, Circular Economy, and Biomimicry) and some practical tools and checklists (EcoDesign, the LiDS Wheel, Design for Recycling, and Design for Disassembly) and describes the latest developments in quantitative assessment methods (“Fast Track” Life Cycle Assessment, Eco-efficient Value Creation, and design of Sustainable Product Service Systems). For the quantitative methods, real-life examples are given for design of luxurious products based on cork, packaging design of food products, and Sustainable Product Service System design of sustainable water tourism.@en