Life cycle assessment sustainability evaluation

Product performance as well as issues related to supply chain, marketing, etc., need to be addressed. It may also be necessary to evaluate not only the product but also the process in terms of environmental impact, life cycle assessment and/or sustainability, before it can be launched. 

An established instrument for ecological evaluation of processes or products is life-cycle-assessment, which is particularly useful for ecological comparison and optimization of processes and products. A consequent realization of the mentioned aspects and challenges will lead to a better and more sustainable situation on our planet for both nature and mankind. 

The authors highlighted the importance of metrics in the subject of green chemistry by pointing out that (a) a set of metrics should be developed to address all 12 green chemistry principles, (b) such a set of metrics should be easy to apply, (c) the metrics should measure progress as well as point chemists in the green direction, (d) the metrics should inform and provide momentum for both chemists and corporate managers, and (e) sustainability metrics are valuable since they focus on life cycle assessment and are thus better able to capture a broad evaluation of sustainability. 

Since life cycle assessment (LCA) can be more than an environmental impact assessment approach, chapter Life Cycle Sustainabiftty Assessment A Holistic Evaluation of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts discusses life cycle sustainabiftty assessment. This extends the holistic environmental LCA to account for the economic and social pillars of sustainabiftty. Lastly, chapter Embedding Sustainabiftty in Product and Process Development—The Role of Process Systems Engineers describes the practical role of process systems engineers in the implementation of sustainabiftty in product and process development. It shows some key aspects and tools that practitioners should take into account to design and develop more sustainable products and processes during material selection, process design, process and product modeling, and supply chain implications. 

In order to evaluate sustainability of products and processes, the life cycle assessment (LCA) concept is a method for industry to understand, manage and reduce the environmental, health and resource consumption impacts associated with processes, products and activities.Due to the well-known environmental impacts of cotton and its further chemical processing, LCA evaluations have been used to develop the sustainability of man-made fibres, as well. In the case of cellulosic fibres based on cellulose polymers produced by photosynthesis, biodegradability can be seen as a benefit to fit the criteria of sustainability. 

There are three parts to the index - there s a brand module, a facilities module and a products module. Each of these modules effeets product sustainability. Overall we re hoping to get a snapshot of the entire life cycle of a product and its impact-it is not a life cycle assessment in itself, but it does try to touch on and measure and evaluate the potential impact of every stage of the life cycle. 

Sustainable plastics can include biobased, biodegradable, and recycled plastics. LCAs will be used to provide a scientific explanation of sustainable plastics. The content of the book includes definitions of sustainability and sustainable materials, evaluations of the environmental concerns for industry, definitions of life cycle assessments, explanations of biobased and recycled plastics, and examples of sustainable plastics as defined by LCAs. 

This new method is named SEEBALANCE. SEEBALANCE targets the adoption of life-cycle social data to the results of eco-efficiency analysis for a complete sustainability assessment methodology. It is a helpful tool in different fields for the evaluation of product or process alternatives. " ... 

Figures 8.2 and 8.3 are simple representations of a single sustainability impact or dimension, in this case, energy use and water use. But there are a multitude of different impacts categories, such as green gas emissions, toxicological loading, eutrophication, land use, and more that need to be considered to fully evaluate the sustainability of a retailer. Hot spot analysis can be used to assess impacts for a large number of sustainability categories for individual products and for the whole of the retailer s portfolio of operations. However, whether the analysis is done at a product level or organizational level, a deep understanding of the life cycle is required.

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment A Holistic Evaluation of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts... 

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