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December 12, 2021
Report
Title
ORIENTING - D1.1 Critical evaluation of environmental approaches
Title Supplement
WP1 - Concept and specifications
Abstract
In order to establish a sustainable circular economy, it is crucial to consider all domains of sustainability and to apply approaches and assessment methods that allow for the identification of trade-offs and imbalances between different sustainability targets. The goal of the ORIENTING project is to develop a robust and operational methodology for the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) of products and services, building on and extending the Environmental Footprint (EF) Framework of the European Commission (EC). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized methodology to assess the environmental impacts of product systems. LCA quantifies potential environmental impacts associated with emissions and uses of resources that take place along the life cycle of products from extraction of raw materials to the end of life of the product. Within the last decades there has been continuous effort from different stakeholders to further develop and strengthen this methodology and to extend it with regard to the other two sustainability domains, economy and society. These domains have to be equally and consistently considered to allow a holistic assessment of the sustainability of products and services. Within the ORIENTING project a robust and fully operational methodology for sustainability assessment of products will be developed. As a first step, suitable methods and research gaps have to be identified in order to address and integrate them into the ORIENTING methodology. Results of this research are presented in separate deliverables addressing different domains of sustainability, as well as criticality, circularity and integration aspects. This report on environmental approaches provides an overview over LCA, focusing on land use impact assessment and derives recommendations for the methodological development within ORIENTING and the environmental assessment within the ORIENTING demonstration. Reflecting the findings and recommendations from the most recent version of the EF guidance (Zampori & Pant, 2019) and the Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods, assessment of impacts associated with land use was chosen as a key topic to address in the evaluation. For both LCA and land use an introduction of the current state of research is provided. As relevant subtopics for land use impact assessment the research fields of biodiversity, erosion, biotic production and soil organic carbon (SOC) were selected. For these topics, requirements and research gaps are presented based on a comprehensive investigation of relevant review publications. To identify relevant methods and review publications, a comprehensive literature research was conducted for each subtopic based on a hybrid text mining approach. Publication search was followed by a screening of abstracts, cross screening, classification and full text screening. As a result, a short list of seven methods were chosen for biodiversity, six for biotic production, four for erosion and two for soil organic carbon.
Author(s)
Person Involved
Fraunhofer Group
Fraunhofer-Verbund Werkstoffe, Bauteile – Materials