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Climate change and ecological crisis are a huge threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, Europe adopted the New Green Deal as a strategy transforming the Union into a competitive resource-efficient economy without greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon neutral in a few decades. The European Green Deal includes the new circular economy action plan, highlighting the importance of a products’ “green design”, saving raw materials, and waste prevention oriented along the entire life cycle of products. Construction and buildings represent one of the key topics for the green transition. In the European Union, buildings are responsible for 40% of our energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions, which are mainly caused by construction, usage, renovation, and demolition. Improving environmental efficiency can play a key role in reaching the carbon neutrality of Europe that is expected to be achieved by 2050. In this research, it was explored how Eco-design, as an innovative approach in buildings and construction, Life Cycle Thinking and Life Cycle Assessment, as fundamental supporting tools in sustainability, and finally appropriate and effective Construction and Demolition Waste recycling processes, particularly oriented to concrete recycling according to the case studies analyzed, can promote a circular economy in buildings and construction.

Indoor air quality (IAQ) management in public spaces is assuming a remarkable importance. Busy environments, like airport terminals, are currently regarded as possible hotspots and IAQ is a crucial element for passengers and staff protection, as well as a key aspect of airport passenger experience. A one-month monitoring period has been performed on IAQ in the airport of Bologna (Italy), as prototypal example of large regional airport. Four strategic areas within the airport have been equipped with electronic monitoring platforms, including different contaminants and two microclimatic sensors. Data suggest that daily variation in IAQ parameters typically follow the activity pattern of the different environments under study (i.e., passengers’ flows) for gaseous contaminants, where particulate matter counts oscillate in a definite range, with a significant role played by ventilation system. Gaseous contaminants show a correlation between indoor and outdoor concentrations, mainly due to airside activities. Micro-climatic comfort parameters have been tested to match with standards for commercial environments. As results appears in line with typical households IAQ values, the current air ventilation system appears to be adequate. Nevertheless, an integrated air management system, based on real-time monitoring, would lead to optimization and improvement in environmental and economical sustainability.

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The diffusion of the culture of sustainability and circular economy increasingly pushes companies to adopt green strategies and integrate circular business models in the corporate agenda. It assumes higher relevance in the packaging industry because of the growing plastics demand, the increasing awareness of consumers on single-use-products, the low recyclability performance and last but not least, the challenge of urban littering and microplastics dispersion in marine ecosystem. This paper presents the case of a small-medium enterprise that implemented a decision-making process to rethink the design of frozen food packaging in accordance with systemic and life cycle thinking. Eco-design and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been simultaneously used to test and validate the redesign process, thus fostering the substitution of the plastic “open and close” cap with a closing method entirely made of cardboard. Results shows how using an integrated decision-making system at the design stage have allowed to get up many benefits at multiple levels, including sustainable and safe supply chain, efficient logistic operations, better recyclability, and lower energy consumption. Moreover, even if it cannot be assessed by the existing tools, the solution provides a strong contribution to the reduction in the consumption of plastics and the prevention of marine pollution.

The increasing scarcity of water is encouraging strategies in water saving and urban water management systems devoted to reducing natural resource consumption and environmental impact. At household and urban scales, there is an increasing interest in onsite greywater and non-potable water reuse systems in order to improve water availability. In this framework, the project GST4Water funded by the European Union (EU) under the POR-FESR 2014–2020 Program of Emilia-Romagna Region, has been developed with the aim to implement water consumption monitoring systems, to define solutions for greywater reuse, and to develop tools for environmental sustainability evaluation applied to water systems. The present study focuses on this last goal, performing a life cycle assessment of the solutions optimized at a district level. In particular, six different scenarios are compared, starting from two models considering traditional water supply together with or without energy consumption related to hot water generation, and five additional models related with different assumptions in terms of greywater recovery systems, and energy and hot water production, at varying percentages of renewable and photovoltaic energy supply. Finally, an evaluation of the return time of environmental investment is carried out, based on the results obtained through the scenario analysis.

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