Edited by Sonia Valdivia and Guido Sonnemann and published by Edward Elgar Publishing, this handbook is a guide for effectively using current tools and methodologies to support well-informed decisions based on life cycle thinking.

 

Chapter 13 of the handbook was co-written by ecoinvent team members Emilia Moreno Ruiz (CTO), Thomas Sonderegger (Project Manager), and four other co-authors. Titled “Data for LCSA – State of the Art and Outlook,” this chapter delves into the intricate landscape of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), shedding light on its three fundamental pillars—environmental, economic, and social—and exploring the evolving methodologies, data collection practices, and the unique challenges associated with each dimension. From navigating the complexities of data availability to discussing the nuances of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), this chapter offers invaluable insights into the current state of LCSA. It paves the way forward for its standardization and operationalization.

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This paper is co-authored by ecoinvent experts Antonio Valente, Carl Vadenbo, Simone Fazio, Thomas Sonderegger, and six other collaborators.

 

In the mission to advance Life Cycle Assessment, the accessibility and interoperability of data remain paramount. The Global LCA Data Access (GLAD) network, a collaborative effort within the Life Cycle Initiative (hosted by United Nations Environmental Programme), has been pivotal in addressing these challenges. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the GLAD Nomenclature Working Group’s (NWG) methodology for mapping elementary flows among major nomenclature systems, including those used in ecoinvent, Environmental Footprint, IDEA, and the U.S. Federal LCA Commons. Led by our team members, the NWG developed a robust procedure and criteria for these mappings, emphasizing the importance of multilateral agreement and iterative reviews.

 

Key highlights from the paper include:

  • Methodology: Detailed process involving flow and compartment matches, supported by the “GLAD Mapper Tool.”
  • Results: Achieving high coverage (>90%) across nomenclature systems, with emphasis on substance uniqueness and environmental compartment granularity.
  • Insights: Importance of approximated matches for enhanced interoperability.
  • Conclusions: A significant step towards a unified nomenclature system, fostering greater interoperability, accessibility, and traceability in LCA data.

 

This work underscores our commitment to openness and collaboration and signifies a crucial advancement in the global LCA community. By promoting interoperability and data accessibility, we pave the way for a more sustainable future.

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Written by our experts Emilia Moreno Ruiz, Lucia Valsasina, Carl Vadenbo, and Avraam Symeonidis, the article offers a comprehensive look at the development, core features, and global influence of the ecoinvent LCI database. They offer insights into how ecoinvent has been an instrumental tool in shaping sustainable decision-making and environmental assessments globally.

 

This year marks a significant milestone for our organization as we celebrate a decade of growth and advancement since the establishment of the ecoinvent association, and twenty impactful years since our first release.

 

Read the full article for an engaging overview of ecoinvent’s journey and our ongoing commitment to enhancing the database. With objectives like improving user-friendliness, facilitating data exchange, and collaborating with international data providers, we’re set to further empower the LCA community.

 

We would like to thank the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan (ILCAJ) for their collaboration.

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Waste management is at the heart of sustainability. With modern economies producing increasing volumes of waste, it’s crucial to ensure proper treatment and disposal to protect our ecosystems and human health. The ecoinvent database features hundreds of datasets dedicated to waste management, covering a wide range of sectors.

 

This sector is not only about waste disposal; it’s a multifaceted world. It encompasses solid waste management (SWM) and wastewater treatment (WWT), with more than 50 countries represented. As industries move towards greener practices, waste management increasingly intertwines with other sectors like recycling, energy production, and product design.

 

The ecoinvent database classifies waste products based on their treatment needs, making it easier to model their environmental impact. It includes various waste types, from municipal solid waste to plastics and glass. Emissions, chemicals, energy inputs, infrastructure, and by-products are all considered for a holistic view of waste management.

 

Three primary treatment methods are covered: mechanical (sorting), thermal (incineration), and biological (composting). Recycling data covers the production of secondary materials, while disposal datasets account for various methods like landfilling.

 

ecoinvent’s WWT sub-sector includes data for more than 20 different wastewater treatments, accommodating a wide range of industrial processes. Direct emissions, materials, energy inputs, infrastructure, and relevant by-products are modeled for a comprehensive understanding.

 

What’s more, all the tools used for modeling these datasets are freely accessible, allowing users to create specific treatments and waste scenarios. This data supports life cycle assessments, carbon footprint calculations, and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for a variety of products and services.

Landfill site with text: 'Sector Spotlight: Waste Management and Recycling'

Explore the waste management and recycling sector of the ecoinvent database to discover how our data supports sustainable waste management possibilities for a greener future.

Titled “Addressing Sustainable Development Goals in Life Cycle Sustainable Assessment: Synergies, challenges, and Needs,” this paper uses text-mining analysis to discover correlations between Life Cycle Sustainable Assessment (LCSA) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

 

The work aimed to further clarify the relationship between LCSA and SDGs by analyzing works that explicitly addressed the links between LCSA and SDGs, investigating the associations between product LCSA and SDGs, and discussing key challenges and needs relating to the connection of LCSA with SDG.

 

One of the paper’s conclusions was that ‘integrating and making sense of information referring to different sustainability aspects is a critical challenge’ and affirmed that the ORIENTING project is testing methods to integrate LCSA results.

 

Another significant finding is the identification of a lack of consensus and a harmonized approach for setting up and analyzing the connections between SDGs and LCSA. The interchangeability of impact categories (e.g., climate change) and indicators (e.g., global warming potential) is an example of an area where a more harmonious nomenclature could be implemented.

 

Congratulations to the ORIENTING project members, including ecoinvent Project Manager Thomas Sonderegger, who co-authored this paper.

 

You can read the paper below and discover the latest news about our involvement with the ORIENTING project on our projects page.

Read the full paper here

About the Journal of Cleaner Production

The Journal of Cleaner Production is an international, transdisciplinary journal that focuses on cleaner production, environmental, and sustainability research and practice. Cleaner production refers to preventing waste while increasing resource efficiency.

 

The JCP prides itself on its high-quality, homogenous peer review standards across the discipline of sustainability. In 2023 alone, the Journal received over thirty-nine thousand submissions, making it a busy, populated space for the latest developments in sustainability.

About the ORIENTING Project

The ORIENTING Project is committed to a holistic life cycle approach that integrates environmental, social, and economic impacts. The project aims to create a robust, operational methodology for LCSA through funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

Based on these criteria, the four following entries were selected as joint winners of the first-place contest prize of €500 each:

 

 

A description and short video of each entry can be viewed by clicking the links in the list above. Below are sample images from each of the winning submissions:

This year’s contest jury members included:

 

The Sustainability Assessment Visualization Contest is organized by Départ de Sentier and sponsored by ecoinvent. With the goal of improving the visualization of life cycle assessment information, the contest invites entries that visualize input data, calculation results, and interpretation algorithms that can help LCA experts better express research findings and identify areas of focus for future work.

 

Congratulations to each of this year’s winners! We look forward to future editions of the contest.

We were pleased to see that roughly half of the respondents also use LCIA scores directly from ecoinvent. Additionally, the users’ wishlist corresponds well with what we have on our to-do list. We are working to tackle the items on that list, but some projects will require additional time. IPCC 2021 ISO14067 and IMPACT World+ (global, not regionalized) are already in the pipeline, which hopefully will also please those who still like using IMPACT 2002+.

 

Furthermore, we saw that USEtox and inventory indicators are of interest. Regionalization is something that might need additional time, but we agree that this is needed. For those asking about LCC and social LCA, please refer to the ORIENTING project, which will help us develop ecoinvent to be a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)-compatible database.

 

We promise to keep working hard and to stay in touch with our user community. Thanks again to everyone who submitted feedback!

 

For any further feedback or questions about LCIA in ecoinvent, feel free to contact Thomas Sonderegger (Project Manager, ecoinvent).

What is your field of work?

LCIA Survey Graphic 1

Are you a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developer or do you exclusively use LCIA results/scores (for example, the “global warming potential 100 years” score) or both?

LCIA Survey Graphic 2

How do you use the ecoinvent database?

LCIA Survey Graphic 3

What is the name of the software/tool you are using?

LCIA Survey Graphic 4

Do you generally use LCIA scores directly from the ecoinvent database, or do you use software that calculates the scores, or both?

LCIA Survey Graphic 5

Do you generally use LCIA scores directly from the ecoinvent database, or do you use software that calculates the scores, or both?If you are using software to access LCIA scores, please specify which.

LCIA Survey Graphic 4

What do you use the LCIA results/scores for?

LCIA Survey Graphic 9

Which methods implemented in ecoinvent do you currently use and/or would you like to have available?

LCIA Survey Graphic 7

Which “legacy” methods in ecoinvent do you currently use and/or would you like to have available?

 

Legacy methods are still published in the ecoinvent database but are no longer actively maintained. This means that a) if an error is reported, it will not be corrected; and b) if a new elementary exchange is added to ecoinvent, legacy methods will not be checked for a characterization factor match with the new exchange.

 

Unfortunately, we did not have a “None” option in the first version of the survey and not selecting any answer is not possible in Forms. Therefore, we reached out to those participants leaving their e-mail to confirm whether they actually wanted to select a method or not. This is why answers are split into without and with “None” as option.

 

LCIA Survey Graphic 8

Which methods would you like to see implemented in the ecoinvent database in the future?

 

ISO 140675
GLAM4
IMPACT World+4
LC-IMPACT4
AWARE4
Biodiversity4
Marine plastic pollution / Plastic leakage3

 

Which methods would you like to see implemented in the ecoinvent database in the future?

Some answers were not clear to us. It seems that there is some confusion about “EF” and “ILCD”. The “EF” (=Environmental Footprint) methods implemented in ecoinvent are the ILCD methods. PEF and OEF are more than the EF methods, they are assessments. CML-IA is name “CML” in ecoinvent and EDIP (we assume a typo) and IMPACT 2002+ are “legacy” methods. We don’t know what “ARD” or “LPST” stand for. Feel free to contact Thomas with clarifications.

Have you ever consulted an ecoinvent LCIA implementation report?

LCIA Survey Graphic 10

How can we better support your LCIA needs? Do you have other comments and/or suggestions for the ecoinvent team?

Answers that do not refer to LCIA have been excluded.

  • Add regionalisation
  • Adding all different elementary flow names from the methods mappings to the synonyms of the flow, but I think you do it already; highlighting for example exact matches, cas number matches, synonyms matches and manual flow mappings in separate lists for the methods
  • Anticipate new standards to implement sensitivly faster
  • Better linking to documentation of a process
  • By continuying your work on transparency and dataset documentation, as well as integration of new datas.
  • By making sure “Documentation” part of the ecoinvent dataset provide a precise description of the perimeter of the dataset (where the activity starts, ends. Which processes are included.
  • complete and transparent documentation of LCI-data to better understand the LCIA results
  • Disccusion/support forum with ecoivent and/or other users
  • Early exchange and provision of documents before the publication of a new ecoinvent version. Perhaps a kind of partially public ticket system with information on which questions/suggestions/errors about LCIA Methods have already been received and their processing status, e.g. whether they will be corrected in the subsequent ecoinvent version.
  • easier to access updated implementation reports
  • Flag the inventory flows that are not characterized in the LCIA method applied
  • Implementation of life cycle cost, and social
  • Implementation of most recent methods for public disclosure
  • Improving elementary flows linking with brightway2
  • More LCI-based methods, eg, water use, land use, etc. Total waste would be good as well, as long as you can plug that in with non-elementary flows.
  • Quick integration of new and relevant methods
  • Quicker updates and software implementation
  • Show the differences of the methods.
  • Targeted webinars
  • Tutorials, videos about the methodologies logic
  • Clear indication of external fees for users of dynamic tools using ecoinvent datapoints.
  • Feel free to contact me on the EF EN 15804 method, I might have suggestion and/or report potential errors?
  • Have a better perspective on future developments
  • I would appreciate if ecoinvent would make the results of this survey public.
  • Implementation specific countries data
  • Please specify the % of secondary materials in each material, and enable easy implementation of parameters for adjusting the %

The paper is based on the work carried out by the authors during the SRI project. The data created constitutes the core of the accommodation services sector in the ecoinvent database.

 

The highlights of the paper are:

  • Treatment of solid waste accounts for 12–61% of the life cycle carbon impacts.
  • Building accounts for 8–69% of the life cycle carbon impacts.
  • Energy consumption accounts for 3–56% of the life cycle carbon impacts.
  • Consumer goods account for 10–25% of the life cycle carbon impacts.
  • Building, solid waste, and consumer goods should all be included in future environmental assessments of hotels.
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