Sustainability assessment environmental indicators

Work is proceeding to develop suitable scenarios and indicators for assessing sustainability. Many of the environmental indicators proposed are based on LCA methodology and broadly correspond to those used at the classification stage. 

IChemE metrics of sustainability consist of 49 indicators classified into three main categories economic, environmental and social. The environmental indicators within the IChemE metrics are similar to those in the CWRT metrics. However, there are some differences. The IChemE metrics include the area of land as an environmental indicator. The actual indicators are (i) the sum of directly occupied and affected land per value added and (ii) the rate of land restoration. Other differences relate to the assessment of the relative impacts of pollutants on the environment and human health. The IChemE indicators do not take into account the life-time of chemicals in various media of the environment. The human health indicator is limited to carcinogenic effects and is normalized to benzene. 

Note that the quality of sustainability assessment relies largely on the comprehensiveness of the sustainability indicators used and data availability and accuracy. Thus it is imperatively important that an electroplating organization select a set of sustainability indicators suitable for assessing economic, environmental, and social sustainability where data and information are accessible and the uncertainties associated with them are manageable. 

When the impact of process scale is viewed from the planetary boundaries perspective, the inherent multicriteria nature of any sustainability assessment is indispensable. Even when only environmental LCA impacts are accounted for, studies have shown that certain boundaries have been crossed or are very close to the limit (i.e., with respect to climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen and phosphorous cycles), while others are stiU reasonably well safeguarded (i.e., stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, and freshwater use) [64]. It is therefore possible that different production sectors may have an impact on different planetary boundaries some of which may be within or already outside their safe operating space. For instance, studies have indicated the severe impacts of plastic debris on marine organisms [65]. Thus, from a cradle-to-grave LCA perspective, fossil-based plastics production may have a more direct or at least a different kind of effect in terms of biodiversity compared to fossil-based fuel production, which is certainly in higher production scales. 

Several studies have been recently conducted with efforts to fiuther improve the current status of biofuel sustainability certification. Gnansounou (2011) proposed a logic-based model for the sustainability assessment of biofuels. The proposed model uses a hierarchical stracture to link multiple factors from the more specific variables to the most general one, sustainability performance. The study proposed 7 general and 20 specific indicators for assessing the social, economic, and environmental performance of a biofuel supply chain. 

A wide range of sustainability-assessment methods have been developed in recent years. Some well-known and commonly used tools for sustainability assessment are Criteria and Indicators (C I), Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and Cost—Benefit Analysis (CB A) (Buytaert et al., 2011). This section focuses on LCA, aiming to present its basic stages. 

Once the financial, environmental, and social indicators and associated metrics have been developed, they may be used to assess an organization s sustainability performance through a sustainability audit, either internally by the organization, or by external stakeholders such as shareholders or environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).25... 

Sustainability is important in the context of industry sectors, products, process technologies, and individual process plants. In assessing performance achievement in sustainability, there is a need for suitable sustainability indicators to measure progress in environmental, economic, and social performance. 

The quantitative assessment of environmental impacts can be made using life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, which accounts for both inputs and emissions. LCA can be used to identify the major environmental impact categories and the sources of those impacts within a chemical processing plant. LCA can also be used to identify the major contributions to environmental impact within a product s life cycle. Impact scores derived from LCA can be used along with economic assessment scores and social indicators to provide indicators of overall sustainability of processes and products. Economic assessments are often limited through failure to account for all internal costs and especially the external costs associated with waste. 

With the development of sustainable development indicators also moving into the role of pesticides and their impact on the environment, clearly, sound statistical information was required, particularly if the role of policy changes on pesticide use was to be assessed over time. Furthermore, an important target of the European Union s (EU) 5th Environmental Action Programme was the reduction of pesticide risk, but this would be impossible to monitor without sound information on changes in use over time. 

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