Page 62 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

CHAPTER

4

Life cycle sustainability assessment:

An ongoing journey

b
a
Sara Zanni , Eric Awere , Alessandra Bonoli b
a b
Department of Management, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy Department of Civil,
Chemical and Management Engineering, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

4.1 Introduction

Considering the established concept of “Sustainability”, as proposed by the Brundtland
report (United Nations General Assembly, 1987), and the three pillars model developed by
Elkinton (1998), several aspects are to be accounted in the evaluation of products and pro-
cesses. In fact, as “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United
Nations General Assembly, 1987), such evaluation should be performed over a system the
boundaries of which comprise all the element required to avoid the shifting of burdens
among generations, over both time and space.
The implicit call for fairness at intergenerational (Kl€ oepffer, 2008) and intragenerational
level requires an extension of a proper sustainability assessment to scope horizontal and lon-
gitudinal dimension of impacts triggered by anthropic activity. Therefore, the whole range of
impacts and effects induced must be assessed, based on the different aspects touched on and
the timing in which these effects unravel. For these reasons, on one hand, “intact environ-
ment, social justice, and economic prosperity” (Finkbeiner et al., 2010: 3310) should represent
the final goal of each application and the yardstick of the assessment, in order to address the
horizontal dimension. On the other hand, the application of a life cycle thinking lens is
required to explore the longitudinal dimension of the impacts and consider both the direct
and indirect impacts triggered throughout the different phases of the product or process life
and the time-scale of the impacts, considering the relationship between present needs and
future opportunities. The proposed EU Integrated Product Policy stressed how life cycle per-
spective is intrinsically inherent to the greening of the product development process (Charter,
2001), but its systematic application is required to trigger the transition required at global

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Decision-Making 57 Copyright # 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818355-7.00004-X