Page 18 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

12 1. Introduction. Life cycle thinking

evaluation, related to the external contest of organizations: technological conditions and
economic state.
Moving from theory to practice, the concept of life cycle sustainability is presented in sev-
eral standards with different meanings and applications. Even if all sustainability dimensions
are standardized by international community, environment still remains the most considered
one in a life cycle approach (Toniolo et al., 2019b).

1.4.3 Partial LCAs: Carbon footprint and water footprint
Over the last 50years, some critical environmental issues have particularly worried the in-
ternational community: the emission of greenhouse gases is the main cause of global climate
change; the scarcity of freshwater availability is critical for healthy lives and a healthy planet;
the energy consumption closely linked to the availability of nonrenewable resources is a dan-
gerous brake on economic development and a threat to political and social world balance; and
increasing land use and fossil fuel combustion are leading to enhanced losses of reactive ni-
trogen to the environment. Attention to specific environmental issues has led the scientific
community to develop impact assessment tools able to go into depth on individual environ-
mental issues. Since the 1980s, in order to know environmental impacts related to greenhouse
gases emission, water consumption, energy sustainability, and nitrogen variation, among
companies, new metric needs have emerged. To meet the market’s needs and provide busi-
nesses and consumers with rigorous assessment methods, new standards have been
published for the calculation of the so-called “partial LCAs.”
To calculate the carbon footprint (CF) of a product or service, the ISO 14067 specifies meth-
odology and requirements to measure the emissions of greenhouse gases in input and output
of a product’s life cycle, and the associated environmental impacts on climate change (ISO,
2018b). This result corresponds to the partial result of LCA related to the life cycle impact cat-
egory indicator “global warming potential”; therefore, CF is a typical case of “partial LCA.”
To support organizations in assessing the environmental profile of water footprint (WF)
consumption and degradation, the ISO 14046 indicates methodology and characteristics that
need to be taken into consideration when assessing the WF of a product from a life cycle per-
spective (ISO, 2014). WF is defined as a metric that quantifies the potential environmental im-
pacts related to water. It includes identification and evaluation of the impacts related to
consumptive water use (e.g., scarcity and availability) and related to degradative water
use (e.g., eutrophication and acidification). The WF gives a profile of the impact category re-
sults that can be reported in a standalone study or as part of a more comprehensive LCA
study (Mazzi et al., 2014).
The environmental profile obtained by these partial LCAs has some advantages but also
limitations. From a scientific perspective, partial LCAs lack a comprehensive environmental
view, because they observe inputs and outputs of the product life cycle with a partial view
which, despite being important, is still relative. On the other hand, LC tools such as CF and
WF may be more detailed than a complete LCA in examining specific environmental prob-
lems because, by focusing on single environmental parameters, they investigate thoroughly
the cause-effect-damage relations of a single impact category.