Decarbonising product supply chains: design and development of an integrated evidence-based decision support system – the supply chain environmental analysis tool (SCEnAT)

Integrated hybrid life cycle assessment and supply chain environmental profile evaluations of lead-based (lead zirconate titanate) versus lead-free (potassium sodium niobate) piezoelectric ceramics

“…Integration of the two methods via a hybrid method augments the specificity of process LCA with the inclusivity of EIO 31,35,[41][42][43] ; hence hybrid LCA models can be implemented in practice to broaden the system boundary whilst complying with ISO standards. 41,44 In the hybrid LCA system, process LCA is interlinked with the complete supply chain system boundary provided by EIO model, which captures the entire economic supply chain along with its sectorial changes and production and consumption patterns.…”

“…28,30 As such, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can been used as a powerful tool to systematically track the broad spectrum of environmental impacts throughout the entire value chain of an activity, product or process and assess them from a systems perspective, identifying approaches for improvement without burden shifting. 28,30,31,35,53 LCA entails the gathering and evaluation of the inputs, outputs, and potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its lifespan and involves four key steps 11 assessment, where emissions and resources are grouped into their respective impact categories and converted into common impact units for comparative analysis; (iv) the interpretation of the inventory and impact assessment of results in order to actualise the objectives of the study.To analyse the contributions of individual process exchange entries into the inventory based on a number of sustainability metrics, the LCA in this work is carried out, from cradle-tograve, across multiple sustainability metrics, based on CML method, 57 namely GHG emissions, land use, pollution (acidification and eutrophication potentials) and ecotoxicity (marine aquatic, marine sediment, fresh water sediment, fresh water aquatic, terrestrial etc. ), human toxicity, malodours air and ionisation radiation.…”

“…The current work adopts an integrated hybrid LCA approach which overcomes boundary limitations of a process approach, by combining the process LCA inventories and Environmental Input-Output (EIO) data, 29,31,35 to evaluate the environmental profile of a laboratory-based PZT versus KNN piezoelectric materials. In the subsections that follows, details of how process LCA and EIO are combined to form hybrid LCA is presented.…”

“…34 As such, it is not able to handle the complex and global nature of supply chains of products. 31,35 The EIO make use of country and/or regional input-output data linked to averaged sectoral emissions to calculate environmental impacts, yielding an allencompassing result. The method offers comprehensiveness and completeness because it captures nearly the entire system boundary, 30,36 by taking into account the entire activities along the chain of supply of a product including those accrued by indirect suppliers, allowing the tracking of the complete range of inputs to a process, thus avoids systems boundary issues that characterises the process-based approach.…”

“…29,37 However, the method suffer from a number of well-recognised limitations, including proportionality and homogeneity assumption, conversion of economic quantities into physical quantities and less specific due to aggregation of a range of activities in one sector. [36][37][38][39][40] Integration of the two methods via a hybrid method augments the specificity of process LCA with the inclusivity of EIO 31,35,[41][42][43] ; hence hybrid LCA models can be implemented in practice to broaden the system boundary whilst complying with ISO standards. 41,44 In the hybrid LCA system, process LCA is interlinked with the complete supply chain system boundary provided by EIO model, which captures the entire economic supply chain along with its sectorial changes and production and consumption patterns.…”