the evah institute, a Division of ecquate Pty ltd, australia 2 vlieglCa, spain abstraCt this paper highlights the urgent need to increase the understanding and uptake of positive messaging, metrics and analysis to facilitate learning across all areas of community and professional environmental education. it examines the failures of current environmental sustainability reporting, communication and learning frameworks to inspire and engage people. it then shows the quantification of 'unsustainability' inherent in the development of world-first automated whole-building life Cycle assessment and life Cycle impact assessment (lCia) software. by focussing on a negative range that stops at zero, lCia excludes positive gains in security of supply, climate, habitat and wellness. through case studies, the authors show how practitioners sought to improve sustainability education. they also sought to measure positive gains by developing life Cycle benefit analysis (lCba) compiled to quantify positive development gains within planetary boundaries' safe operating space. lCba was tested in third-party-certified environmental Product Declarations and building projects. Case studies compare benefit and damage metrics for supply, climate, habitat and wellness outcomes, carbon drawdown ratings and circularity scores. the authors report what consultants, teachers, interns and clients learnt about gaps in environmental education frameworks in other institutions. they reflect on how to expand positive sustainability messaging and learning across industry, community and education from primary to post-graduate and professional accreditation. of vital significance is the need to address youth and student anger and apathy in response to the locked-in devastating climate change and wildlife extinctions they have inherited. the authors assert the critical need to engage people of all generations in counting benefits and gains and offer positive sustainability development strategies to this end. among the recommendations is the need for positive climate and habitat security narratives to activate interest, empower responses and motivate teaching and learning.
<abstract> <p>Development of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)s used for green marketing, specification, procurement, certification and green building rating systems are important for documenting and understanding product environmental performance. Considering such applications any misleading of stakeholders has serious legal ramifications. Various studies have highlighted EPD veracity depends mainly on the data quality of underpinning life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper compares data quality across polyester product case studies, literature surveys and EPDs. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) results are presented and interpreted. Surveys show recycled polyester fibre results are most sensitive to melt spinning energy data which varies over a wide range. The case studies compare results from median, lower and upper energy use in melt spinning. The work highlights that, accurate, clear definitions and vocabulary is as vital for specific foreground process data as it is for generic background supply chain data. This is to avoid misconceptions and mismatched assumptions in respect of EPD data quality and incorrect acceptance of inadequate charting of all essential processes. If product-specific accurate data is inaccessible, EPD options include presenting impact assessment results from LCI of best and worst-case scenarios. This is preferable to legal risks of using junk data that misleads stakeholders in marketing. General recommendations are presented for LCA practitioners to improve EPD data quality and accuracy. These include using multiple data sources to avoid reliance on any single database. Data also needs to be verified by a third-party with industry expertise independent of the specific manufacturer. It recommends using suitable, comprehensive and specific product-related scenarios for data development in any EPD.</p> </abstract>
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