Goods that are good enough: Introducing an absolute sustainability perspective for managing chemicals in consumer products

Fantke, Peter; Illner, Nicole

doi:10.1016/j.cogsc.2018.12.001

Cited by 55 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…Finally, in support of achieving overarching global goals for sustainable development, we ultimately also need to benchmark life cycle impacts associated with chemical production from both fossil‐ and bio‐based feedstocks against nature's own capacity to recover from chemical emissions (Fantke & Illner, ). For LA production, our study provides a possible starting point for evaluating environmental sustainability along entire life cycles in support of assessing progress toward achieving sustainability goals when moving toward a bio‐based industry, and our findings can easily be extended and applied to other biochemicals and feedstocks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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Using selected bio‐based feedstocks as alternative to fossil resources for producing biochemicals and derived materials is increasingly considered an important goal of a viable bioeconomy worldwide. However, to ensure that using bio‐based feedstocks is aligned with the global sustainability agenda, impacts along the entire life cycle of biochemical production systems need to be evaluated. This will help to identify those processes and technologies, which should be targeted for optimizing overall environmental sustainability performance. To address this need, we quantify environmental impacts of biochemical production using distinct bio‐based feedstocks, and discuss the potential for reducing impact hotspots via process optimization. Lactic acid (LA) was used as an example biochemical derived from corn, corn stover, and macroalgae (Laminaria sp.) as feedstocks of different technological maturity. We used environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), a standardized methodology, considering the full life cycle of the analyzed biochemical production systems and a broad range of environmental impact indicators. Across production systems, feedstock production and biorefinery processes dominate life cycle impact profiles, with choice in energy mix and biomass processing as main influencing aspects. Results show that uncertainty decreases with increasing technological maturity. When using Laminaria sp. (least mature among selected feedstocks), impacts are mainly driven by energy utilities (up to 86%) due to biomass drying. This suggests to focus on optimizing or avoiding this process for significantly increasing environmental sustainability of Laminaria sp.‐based LA production. Our results demonstrate that applying LCA is useful for identifying environmental impact hotspots at an earlier stage of technological development across biochemical production systems. With that, our approach contributes to improving the environmental sustainability of future biochemical production as part of moving toward a viable bioeconomy worldwide.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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“…Our study demonstrates how measured concentrations of chemicals in soil can operationally be combined with screening-level toxicity and ecotoxicity characterization models tailored toward a specific region of interest, based on adapting region-specific landscape data. This approach suggests considering fate and exposure processes as well as related potential human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts in environmental studies, thereby adding an important sustainabilityrelated dimension that is required to assess and evaluate possible trade-offs between impacts and regions and ultimately linking such impacts to physical limits for chemical pollution to achieve environmental sustainability (Fantke and Illner 2019). Region-specific landscape data together with analytical techniques for identifying bromine concentrations in soils allows different considered districts to be ranked according to the potential impacts on ecosystems and human health caused by their different soil concentration levels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards integrating toxicity characterization into environmental studies: case study of bromine in soils

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Kirchhübel

Baranovskaya

et al. 2019

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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Pollution from bromine and some of its related compounds is currently unregulated in soil from Russia and other countries, and tools for sound assessment of environmental impacts of bromine contamination are largely missing. Hence, assessing potential implications for humans and ecosystems of bromine soil contamination is urgently needed, which requires the combination of measured soil concentrations from environmental studies and quantified potential toxicity impacts. To address this need, we used data from an experimental study assessing bromine in soils (384 samples) of Tomsk oblast, Russia, starting from measured concentrations obtained by Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis in an earlier study. From these data, we calculated the bromine mass in soils and used these as starting point to characterize related cumulative impacts on human health and ecosystems in the Tomsk region, using a global scientific consensus model for screening-level comparative toxicity characterization of chemical emissions. Results show that the combination of sampling methodology with toxicity characterization techniques presents a new approach to be used in environmental studies aimed at environmental assessment and analysis of a territory. Our results indicate that it is important to account for substance-specific chemical reaction pathways and transfer processes, as well as to consider region-specific environmental characteristics. Our approach will help complement environmental assessment results with environmental sustainability elements, to consider potential tradeoffs in impacts, related to soil pollution, in support of improved emission and pollution reduction strategies.

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“…This requires taking a life cycle perspective of the chemical in its specific application context. 16 Both chemical of interest and the related product come with their own life cycles. Fig.…”

Section: Chemical and Product Life Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…59,78 Finally, in support of reducing the use of harmful chemicals in consumer products and production processes, it is essential to promote further efforts for including metrics to measure progress against targets for a sustainable development and a circular economy. 16,79…”

Section: Future Research Needs and Way Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%