Life cycle assessment (LCA): informing the development of a sustainable circular bioeconomy?

Ecological disturbances and abundance of anthropogenic pollutants in the aquatic ecosystem: Critical review of impact assessment on the aquatic animals

Anthropogenic toxins are discharged into the environment and distributed through a variety of environmental matrices. Trace contaminant detection and analysis has advanced dramatically in recent decades, necessitating further specialized technique development. These pollutants can be mobile and persistent in small amounts in the environment, and ecological receptors will interact with it. Despite the fact that few researches have been undertaken on invertebrate exposure, accumulation, and biological implications, it is apparent that a wide range of pollutants can accumulate in the tissues of aquatic insects, earthworms, amphipod crustaceans, and mollusks. Due to long-term stability during long-distance transit, a number of chemical and microbiological agents that were not previously deemed pollutants have been found in various environmental compartments. The uptake of such pollutants by the aquatic organism is done through the process of bioaccumulation when dangerous compounds accumulate in living beings while biomagnification is the process of a pollutant becoming more hazardous as it moves up the trophic chain. Organic and metal pollution harms animals of every species studied so far, from bacteria to phyla in between. The environmental protection agency says these poisons harm humans as well as a variety of aquatic organisms when the water quality is sacrificed in typical wastewater treatment systems. Contrary to popular belief, treated effluents discharged into aquatic bodies contain considerable levels of Anthropogenic contaminants. This evolution necessitates a more robust and recent advancement in the field of remediation and their techniques to completely discharge the various organic and inorganic contaminants.

Upgrading agrifood co-products via solid fermentation yields environmental benefits under specific conditions only

Transforming residual biomass into edible ingredients is increasingly promoted to alleviate the environmental impacts of food systems. Yet, these approaches mostly rely on emerging technologies and constrained resources, and their environmental benefits remain unclear. By combining process-based consequential life cycle analysis, uncertainty assessment and biomass resource estimation, we quantified the impacts of deploying waste-to-nutrition pathways, here applied to the upgrading of agrifood co-products by solid-state fermentation (SSF). The benefits of reducing the demand for soybean meal by enhancing the protein concentration of feed through SSF do not compensate for the environmental burdens induced by the process on climate change, water depletion and land use. Besides unlocking feed markets to low-feed-quality streams, SSF outperforms energy valorization for most environmental impacts but is less competitive to mitigate climate change. Yet, SSF yields overall environmental benefits when unlocking food markets rather than supplying feed and energy services. Systematic methodological harmonization is required to assess the potential of novel ingredients, as outcomes vary according to the displaced food and feed baskets, and related land use changes.

Process design and life cycle assessment of furfural and glucose co-production derived from palm oil empty fruit bunches

In light of environmental issues, lignocellulosic empty fruit bunch (EFB) biomass is promoted as a carbon-neutral, environmentally friendly, and renewable alternative feedstock. A comprehensive environmental assessment of EFB biorefineries is critical for determining their sustainability in parallel with the bioeconomy policy. Nonetheless, no life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed on co-producing food and biochemicals (furfural and glucose) derived from EFB biomass. This research is the first to evaluate the environmental performance of the furfural and glucose co-production processes from EFB biomass. Environmental analysis is conducted using a prospective gate-to-gate LCA for four impact categories, including global warming potential (GWP), acidification (ADP), eutrophication (EP), and human toxicity (HT). Aspen Plus is used to simulate the co-production process of furfural and glucose as well as generate mass and energy balances for LCA inventory data usage. The findings suggest that the environmental footprint in respect of GWP, ADP, EP, and HT is 4846.85 kg CO2 equivalent per ton EFB, 7.24 kg SO2 equivalent per ton EFB, 1.52 kg PO4 equivalent per ton EFB, and 2.62E-05 kg 1,4-DB equivalent per ton EFB, respectively. The normalized overall impact scores for GWP, ADP, EP, and HT are 1.16E-10, 2.28E-11, 6.12E-10, and 2.18E-17 years/ton of EFB, respectively. In summary, the proposed integrated plant is not only economically profitable but also environmentally sustainable. In the attempt to enhance the Malaysian economic sector based on the EFB, this study has the potential to serve as an indicator of the environmental sustainability of the palm oil industry.

Graphical abstract

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10668-022-02633-8.

Opportunities for Low Indirect Land Use Biomass for Biofuels in Europe

Sustainable biofuels are an important tool for the decarbonisation of transport. This is especially true in aviation, maritime, and heavy-duty sectors with limited short-term alternatives. Their use by conventional transport fleets requires few changes to the existing infrastructure and engines, and thus their integration can be smooth and relatively rapid. Provision of feedstock should comply with sustainability principles for (i) producing additional biomass without distorting food and feed markets and (ii) addressing challenges for ecosystem services, including biodiversity, and soil quality. This paper performs a meta-analysis of current research for low indirect land use change (ILUC) risk biomass crops for sustainable biofuels that benefited either from improved agricultural practices or from cultivation in unused, abandoned, or severely degraded land. Two categories of biomass crops are considered here: oil and lignocellulosic. The findings confirm that there are significant opportunities to cultivate these crops in European agro-ecological zones with sustainable agronomic practices both in farming land and in land with natural constraints (unused, abandoned, and degraded land). These could produce additional low environmental impact feedstocks for biofuels and deliver economic benefits to farmers.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Two Pneumatic Urban Waste Collection Systems Compared to Traditional Truck Collection in an Airport

Due to the increasing need for a more sustainable environment, the study of waste management strategies is increasing worldwide. Pneumatic urban waste collection is an alternative to the conventional truck collection, especially in urban areas, where there is a need of reducing traffic and its pollution. LCA is a methodology that can help in the evaluation of the environmental impact of any process or product; therefore, this study, based on the methodologies ISO 14040 and from the cradle to the grave, compares different waste collection systems in an airport. The results show that the pneumatic collection system with the innovative AutoWaste compact central unit can reduce the annual flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent for 30 years and per ton) up to 25% compared to a pneumatic collection system with a conventional central.