Food waste generated from the food service sector is associated with significant social, ecological and economic impacts. There is lack of knowledge on status quo, drives and solutions for food waste in food service sector despite its importance. In order to understand and identify key issues of food waste and find potential solutions for food waste minimization in food service business, both a questionnaire and a qualitative study were conducted using China as a case country. 228 questionnaires were collected and in a subsequent workshop 51 representatives from 19 enterprises and other organizations joined. The results show that more than half (57%) of the respondents pay no attention to food waste issue, while majority of the respondents (86%) pay attention to regulations and policy on waste issues, suggesting that these instruments would be efficient tools to take actions on reducing food waste. The workshop identified 21 drivers with division of different stages including pre-kitchen (upstream processing, procurement and storage), kitchen and post-kitchen (consumption & communication with consumers), which is then categorized according to the focus (including 13 internal drivers derived from foods service business itself and 8 external factors caused by other parties). 33 possible solutions were proposed for food waste mitigation and reduction, among which 25 were directly for Chinese food service business internal improvement such as food waste management system upgrading, staff capacity raising, innovative actions, more tasteful dishes and adjusted potion size from different angles or for the joint activities by food service business and other relevant stakeholders like consumers interaction, clear communicated procurement standards with upstream suppliers. This paper pinpointed some interesting findings under the Chinese context, such as lacking of food waste measurement, considerable amount of upstream processing waste resulted from combination of unclear standards and buyers’ privilege”, noticeable food waste from central kitchen and decoration/free snacks food waste etc.. This paper has not only identified the current status quo of the Chinese food service business food waste, but also summarized systematically the potential drivers from the business with specific division of different stages and gave out possible solutions, all directly from the staffs’ opinions. The findings would be referential to global food waste issues under similar situation.
The Circular Economy (CE) concept is receiving increasing global attention and has captivated many disciplines, from sustainability through to business and economics. There is currently a strong drive by companies, academics and governments alike to implement the CE. Numerous “circularity indicators” have emerged that measure material flow or recirculated value of a system (e.g. product or nation). However, if its implementation is to improve environmental performance of society, the action must be based on scientific evidence and quantification or it may risk driving “circularity for circularity's sake”. This paper, therefore, aims to review the recent circular economy literature that focuses on assessing the environmental implications of circularity of products and services. To do this we divide the system levels into micro (product level), meso (industrial estate/symbiosis) and macro (national or city level). A scoping literature review explores the assessment methods and indicators at each level. The results suggest that few studies compare circularity indicators with environmental performance or link the circularity indicators between society levels (e.g. the micro and macro-levels). However, adequate tools exist at each level (e.g. life cycle assessment (LCA) at the micro-level and multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis at the macro-level) to provide the ability to adequately assess and track the CE performance if placed within a suitable framework. The challenge to connect the micro and macro-levels remains. This would help understand the link between changes at the micro-level at the macro-level, and the environmental consequences. At the meso-level, industrial symbiosis continues to grow in potential, but there is a need for further research on the assessment of its contribution to environmental improvement. In addition, there is limited understanding of the use phase. For example, national monitoring programmes do not have indicators on stocks of materials or the extent of the circular economy processes (such as the reuse economy, maintenance and spare parts) which already contribute to the CE. The societal needs/functions framework offers a promising meso-level link to bridge the micro and macro-levels for assessment, monitoring and setting thresholds.
Environmental pollution, resource scarcity, and freshwater shortage are critical world challenges facing humanity. Process industry produces large amounts of brine, a waste water with a high salinity level and often critical raw materials. This study applies the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) to quantify societal benefits and risks in developing brine treatment systems. S-LCA is implemented for hotspot and site-specific levels on four case studies of the Zero Brine project. Hotspot analysis focused on the major commodities. Social Hotspot Database was used as source for data and endpoint indicators. In addition, site-specific analysis regarded the social performance of the case studies companies; interviews and questionnaires were performed with representatives of the four case studies. The collected data were converted to scores with subcategory assessment method and performance reference points. The results show that for all case studies “Labor rights and decent work” and “Health and safety” indicators result in the largest impacts due to imports of commodities from developing countries. Site-specific results show that the overall social sustainability performance of the case study companies is at a good level. The only potential areas for improvement are the “Occupational accidents” and “Contribution to the local community”. The former are minimally higher for silica plant and higher for coal mine in relation to these sectors average accidents rates. Furthermore, the coal mine company can contribute more to the local community and reduce conflicts concerning environmental impacts at the city level. Common identified hotspots among the case studies are: China, India and Congo. Reducing imports from these countries will significantly improve the societal performance of the brine systems.
Achieving the European Union's (EU-27) climate targets for 2050 requires moving away from fossil fuels, for which the necessary heating and cooling (H&C) technologies are mostly already available in the domestic sector. These H&C technologies, such as heat pumps and photovoltaic and thermal solar panels, reduce air pollution and thus have positive climate and health effects, but require the increased use of limited materials.
Although the integration of such technologies into technology packages (TPs) further increases energy efficiency, monetary values of the climate and health effects of these TPs have not been assessed from a life cycle perspective including the production phase. Therefore, we monetize the full impacts of adopting such innovative H&C TPs in refurbished and new residential and tertiary buildings in the EU-27. With that aim, we combine an analysis of air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from the life cycle assessment of the TPs with long-term scenarios of H&C demand, to generate country-specific emissions (2030 and 2050).
Accordingly, climate and health impacts are estimated using the Greenhouse gas and Air pollution Interactions and Synergies and Alpha RiskPoll models. The total estimated monetary benefits of TP implementation in the EU-27, including its health effects (dominated by reduced premature mortality) and climate impacts, are approximately 15–49 billion €2015 in 2030 and 34–123 billion €2015 in 2050. Furthermore, the benefits are 13 %–15 % higher if the health effects on all European countries are considered. These substantial benefits can justify the broader deployment of TP technologies in the future.
Vertical farms are often claimed to have better environmental performance compared to conventional products on the market. However, there are few assessments of the environmental performance of vertical farms, in particular commercial systems. This study has aimed to analyze the environmental performance of a large commercial vertical farm in Sweden producing packaged lettuce. Life cycle assessment was employed to assess the environmental performance and compare it to conventional imported and domestically produced lettuce from a cradle-to-grave perspective. For conventional supply chains, the production, transportation to Sweden, washing, processing, packaging, and final distribution were all included.
The results from the study suggest that the vertical farm has lower GHG emissions than conventionally sourced varieties. However, for other impact categories, the vertical farm may have larger environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective due primarily to the large electricity demand. The electricity use, packaging, infrastructure, and distribution of the products to retail were found to be the primary hotspots for the system. Finally, key performance indicators are also provided to compare the results of this study with other indoor farming studies. The results from the KPIs suggest that the vertical farm has better water use efficiency, GHG emissions, and energy use efficiency compared to other studies in the literature. The results of this study provide insights into the environmental performance and resource use of vertical farms, which can be used for comparisons and validation of claims in the industry, and to provide empirical evidence to this developing field.
The clothing industry has been active in recent years to develop more sustainable and circular business models, with extensive attention to fossil fibers and cotton, although wool has received little academic attention. This study follows the valorization process of conventionally discarded wool from a sheep farm in Sweden to produce a wool sweater. The aim is to highlight important environmental and social hotspots for valorizing the waste wool in a new supply chain for the clothing company. The study employs life cycle assessment (LCA) and social life cycle assessment (SLCA) with the PSILCA database to assess different supply chains. The LCA results illustrate that the supply chain valorizing waste wool significantly reduces environmental impacts compared to conventional supply chains of merino wool. The processing of the wool and sweater assembly contribute to the largest share of the environmental impacts and are sensitive to the choice of electricity mix employed for processing and manufacturing. The results from the SLCA suggest that the supply chains involving primarily European producers have fewer social risks than the conventional supply chains for wool. Large social risks are present in the shipping between production sites in Europe, and manufacturing facilities for the wool garments, pointing to the care required to ensure social responsibility along the supply chain. The SLCA results are sensitive to the cost assumptions made for activities along the supply chain. The results provide empirical evidence and highlight areas to improve the environmental and social implications for developing a new circular supply chain.
Many sustainability evaluation tools exist, but few are used on a day-to-day basis within the process industries to help project teams make better decisions regarding process and product improvements. This article presents collated experiences and views from the EU process sectors on the ‘state-of-the-art’ of sustainability evaluation tools, highlighting the differences between the practical use of such tools in an industrial setting versus simplified ideal-world case studies. The review was performed as part of an EU cross-sector project, ‘STYLE’, through formation of an international consortium, reviewing current practice, testing of sustainability evaluation tools in industry case studies, academic validation of tools’ functions and features, and stakeholder consultations. Consequently, a proposal is made regarding the high-level features and functions of a toolkit to address gaps and shortfalls in currently available tools and identification of useful features that could be implemented more widely. The proposed toolkit framework consists of a three-stage process:materiality setup, qualitative screening and semi-quantitative assessment. Recommendations are also made regarding further research and tool development needs, requiring collaboration between sustainability expertise and ‘soft’ sciences to address barriers to tools being used regularly and broadly across industry.