Page 63 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

58 4. Life cycle sustainability assessment: An ongoing journey

market level and, consequently, it must be necessarily verified through a quantitative
approach.
As reported by Guin ee et al. (2011), the attention towards the environmental component of
the impacts developed by the manufacturing, use, and disposal of goods stepped into diffuse
awareness far earlier than the other components. This aspect was, in fact, detailed in terms of
energy, resource use, efficiency, and pollution control (Assies, 1992) in the late 1960s and early
1970s, when the first rudimentary environmental assessments were realized. The very first
experience reported by Guin ee et al. (2011), in particular, developed by the Midwest Research
Institute (MRI) for the Coca Cola Company (unpublished) in 1969, aimed at analyzing a set of
products through the application of a framework defined as “resource and environmental
profile analysis” (REPA), with a life cycle approach. Resource efficiency in the production
chain and environmental issues represented the main scope of the assessment, evaluated with
a company-oriented lens, but setting a crucial turning point for the sector.
A comprehensive and solid theoretical framework for what would subsequently be
defined as “environmental life cycle assessment” (E-LCA) appeared only later, in the
1990s, with a remarkable contribution of both scholars and practitioners. In this sense, as
underlined by Guin ee et al. (2011), on one hand, several journals kept the pace with the evo-
lution of the research conversation, e.g., Journal of Cleaner Production, Resources, Conserva-
tion, and Recycling, International Journal of LCA, Environmental Science & Technology, and
the Journal of Industrial Ecology; on the other hand, the Society of Environmental Toxicology
and Chemistry (SETAC) played a leading role in the definition of the LCA practice, stating its
quantitative nature and the strive towards the standardization that should have been
undertaken.
The first reported example of the extension of the scope of LCA to include not only the
environmental dimension, but the three pillars model (Elkinton, 1998; Remmen et al.,
2007), as suggested by Kl€ oepffer (2008), is related to product line analysis (produktlinie-
nanalyse) by the Oeko-Institut in 1987, but it is only far later that a comprehensive conceptual
framework appeared. As highlighted by Zamagni (2012), the very concept of sustainability
has undergone a mutation throughout the last 40 years within the research field, experiencing
an extraordinary increase in interest, almost unparalleled by other topics.
The implementation of sustainability-oriented approaches in research, development, and
manufacturing of product, as well as process design and management, requires the applica-
tion of a systemic perspective in the decision-making. In particular, as stated by Finkbeiner
et al. (2010), the shift towards sustainability implies a new paradigm, based on an “active,
international, multicriteria, and stakeholder driven” approach (Finkbeiner et al., 2010:
3310), overcoming the old one, i.e., “reactive, national, single-issue and, government driven
environmental protection” (Finkbeiner et al., 2010: 3310).
For this reason, visualizing the ideal process of development of the LCSA concept, as pro-
posed by Finkbeiner et al. (2010), started from the application of the general idea of life cycle
thinking, with an increased awareness towards resource scarcity and environmental protec-
tion against negative effects triggered during manufacturing, use, and disposal of products;
this to be followed by the implementation of a single-issue impact assessment framework,
such as carbon footprint and water footprint, followed by integrated life cycle assessment
(LCA), mainly focused on environmental impacts. The preeminence attributed to the