Author(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
(Español) Purpose: Eco-labelling has become part of the business strategy of companies thanks to numerous advantages in terms of engaging with consumers and gaining market quota. The aim of this article is to present a critical discussion on the development and implementation of a new eco-label named pescaenverde, registered in Spain, as the first type III eco-label in the Spanish fishing sector that is based on life cycle approaches for seafood products. Methods: More specifically, it aims to complement ecosystem-based eco-labels with the computation of the carbon footprint and the energy return on investment (EROI) of seafood products. Furthermore, it proposes to discuss the ecological criteria, certification process or the opportunities and challenges of the market implementation of this eco-label in detail. Finally, the authors argue that life cycle eco-labels should be considered important complements for more specific sector- or ecosystem-oriented labels already in use, rather than direct competitors. Results and discussion: There has been much criticism towards the eco-labelling sector as regards the transparency and scientific rigour of its standards. The fishing and seafood sector, which has experienced a boom in eco-labelling in recent years, due mainly to the strength of the Marine Stewardship Council certification scheme, is not alien to this controversy, since critics advocate expanding the concept of sustainable fisheries beyond an ecosystem approach in order to account for global environmental concerns such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or energy use. Not surprisingly, the European Union and other authorities currently encourage eco-labels to base their ecological criteria on life cycle approaches. Therefore, the current study discusses the ecological criteria, certification process or the opportunities and challenges of the market implementation of this eco-label in detail. Conclusions: The specificity of the life cycle inventory scheme used in pescaenverde delivers an accurate computation of environmental impacts for the specific case of Spanish fisheries. However, the geographical expansion of this scheme to other nations or regions will be conditioned by an important software adaptation to the particular inventory characteristics of the new fisheries, fleets and products. Recommendations: Adapting ecological criteria to other situations would also need substantial discussion, since the use of this certification scheme is not intended to contrast or compare seafood products against each other but to provide consumers with an easily identifiable label through which they can detect environmentally sustainable practices in terms of GHG emissions and energy use in the fishing fleets supporting the seafood products purchased.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe, Ramzy Kahhat Abedrabbo, Isabel Quispe Trinidad y otros
(Español) The Peruvian coast has developed a robust agricultural sector despite the low average rainfall thanks to the availability of water resources from rivers and groundwater. In fact, this area has become one of the main producers of green asparagus worldwide due to the availability of water and the high yield rates that can be reached. However, irrigation and intensive agriculture constitute a significant threat to water depletion in the region, as well as to important changes in land use. In addition, the intensive use of fertilizers and plant protection agents can increase the amount of nutrients and/or toxic agents in river and in the soil. Hence, a Life Cycle Assessment study was conducted for an agricultural farm in Paracas that cultivates green asparagus for export to North America or Europe. The aim of the study was to understand the potential environmental impacts associated with the cultivation of this product in a hyper-arid area. Results showed a considerably lower water use in the cultivation site when compared to business-as-usual values for the region, due to the advanced irrigation system applied. Environmental impacts were strongly influenced by the high energy intensity linked to the production of inorganic fertilizers used on-site and, to a lesser extent, plant protection agents. Transport environmental burdens were also identified as important sources of environmental impact throughout the impact categories monitored, especially when airfreighted to the final country of destination. Finally, the use of methyl bromide to fumigate green asparagus at US customs implied a high burden in terms of ozone depletion. The results in this study intend to be a proxy to understand the specific hotspots linked to the production of green asparagus in Peru, as well as a way forward for local small- and medium-scale companies to get involved in the improvement of their ecological marketing strategies.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe, Samy García Torres, Ramzy Kahhat Abedrabbo y otros
(Español) In order to combat the threat of climate change, countries have begun to implement policies which restrict GHG emissions in the electricity sector. However, the development of national electricity mixes should also be sensitive to resource availability, geo-political forces, human health impacts, and social equity concerns. Policy focused on GHG goals could potentially lead to adverse consequences in other areas. To explore the impact of “climate-centric” policy making on long-term electricity mix changes, we develop two cases for Peru and Spain analyzing their changing electricity grids in the period 1989–2013. We perform a Life Cycle Assessment of annual electricity production to catalogue the improvements in GHG emissions relative to other environmental impacts. We conclude that policies targeting GHG reductions might have the co-benefit of also reducing air pollution and toxicity at the expense of other important environmental performance indicators such as water depletion. Moreover, as of 2013, both countries generate approximately equal GHG emissions per kWh, and relatively low emission rates of other pollutants compared to nations of similar development levels. Although climate-centric policy can lead to some positive environmental outcomes in certain areas, energy policy-making should be holistic and include other aspects of sustainability and vulnerability.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
(Español) Purpose: European pilchard captures constitute an important source of income for the Portuguese fishing sector. This raw material is used for a varied range of final seafood products, such as canning, fresh seafood consumption or bait for other fisheries. The Portuguese purse being fleet, which concentrates most of the pilchard landings, has recently obtained the Marine Stewardship Council certification scheme, demonstrating the effort of the fleet to comply with sustainable fishing practices. However, this scheme does not take into account the human inputs to the fishery, such as fuel consumption or the use of other materials and resources. Consequently, life-cycle methods, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), have arisen to provide a thorough assessment of the environmental profile of fishing fleets. In the current study, LCA is combined with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a management tool, in order to understand the eco-efficiency of the individual vessels that compose this fleet. Methods: A 5-step LCA + DEA method, previously used to assess resembling vessel samples, was used to examine the efficiency of 20 purse seins in the northern Portugal for years 2011 and 2012. Individual Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) were gathered for each vessel to perform, thereafter, the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). DEA matrices were generated based on the LCI in order to obtain the efficiency values for each unit. Finally, based on the efficiency projections provided by the DEA model, a new LCIA was performed for inefficient vessels in order to calculate the potential environmental benefits of operating at higher levels of efficiency. Results and discussion: The average efficiency of the fleet in the two different years of assessment was slightly above 60%. Furthermore, individual vessels showed a fairly low standard deviation across the 2 years of assessment, demonstrating that units with higher levels of efficiency tend to maintain these values through the analyzed window. In fact, this result, given its strong correlation with fuel use, appears to have relation with the existence of a certain level of “skipper effect”. Important environmental benefits, mainly linked to the optimization of fuel resources, could be achieved if inefficient vessels were to operate efficiently, especially in terms of two main impact categories: climate change and fossil depletion. Conclusions: The results in this study confirm that fishing small-pelagic fish shows low energy intensity as compared to other fisheries. However, despite this worldwide tendency, the use of LCA + DEA confirms that substantial improvements in terms of optimizing energy and material inputs, as well as in reducing environmental impacts, can be achieved in these fishing fleets. Show less
Open linkAuthor(s): Ramzy Kahhat Abedrabbo y otros
(Español) There is increasing interest in assessing the environmental impacts of consumer electronics using methods such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA). Both assessment methods depend on quantifying the materials and parts contained in these products, i.e., the bill of Attributes (BOA). While there has been significant work to develop commercial and public databases detailing material and energy flows in production processes, there have been no comparable efforts to characterize BOA. Further, such assessment is complicated by rapidly evolving production processes and product design and consumption trends. This study was undertaken to assess the degree of change in product attributes commonly used as inputs for LCA for a common consumer electronic product: laptop computers. The analysis includes (1) temporal evolution of BOA for a consistent product type over multiple generations (14.1″ laptops) and (2) variability in a fixed year within a product type (laptops of different sizes). In total, eleven laptop computers were disassembled and characterized based on function, components, and materials. In addition, the study included measurement of silicon die area for all product motherboards and thirty dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cards produced over the period 1999–2011. Results reveal trends important for assessing and designing greener consumer electronics. The fundamental dynamic is the extent technological progress is used to improve functionality versus reduce material and energy footprint. For a variety of attributes, it was found that material footprint did not change significantly over the period 1999–2008, suggesting that improvements in functionality roughly balanced efficiency gains. In particular, total mass and material shares were roughly constant over the period studied. Battery mass, hard disk drive mass, and DRAM die area all decreased per unit of functionality (kWh, GB, MB) over time, but showed roughly constant totals per year. Initial benchmarking to other electronics (netbook, tablet, smartphone) is included here, but further work is needed to determine if the observed pattern in material intensity and functionality is continued over time. This trend, if robust, is important because (1) the BOA inputs to LCA or MFA for an established form factor are surprisingly constant over time, improving temporal robustness of assessment results, and (2) one cannot assume that dematerialization will automatically lead to material and energy reductions for consumer electronics. There is a need for concerted effort from the LCA community to characterize and model BOAs. As collecting BOA data is labor intensive, heuristics can potentially play an important role to streamline analysis. The product attributes that were most consistent over time and across product class for the case study, like material composition, may be good candidates for streamlining data collection and product characterization. However, potential predictors of silicon die area tested here were highly variable and more sensitive to change over time. The most promising estimation methods were those that focused on measuring the area of the five largest integrated circuits (for all motherboards, just five chips contained as much as 30–70% of all die area) and estimating the rest using an average die area per chip ratio. However, given the uncertainty in all tested heuristics, their application to an LCA or MFA should be used with caution.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
(Español) Land use changes (LUCs) constitute a crucial source of environmental impact in production systems, which are mostly associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This circumstance is especially important for the agricultural sector, since these imply an important proportion of the total GHG emissions occurring worldwide. Wine and grape production is a key sector in Spain, representing the largest surface area at European level. In the past decades, important wine related LUCs have been observed due to changes in farming methods/type, number of Denominations of Origin, and the establishment of larger wineries that have enhanced exports. The current study presents a temporally based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of the Ribeiro appellation in NW Spain, in which the gradual changes in the land use, as well as the technological improvements are analyzed in detail in order to understand how the environmental profile of this specific wine producing area has shifted in the past two decades (i.e., from 1990 to 2009). On the one hand, phenomena such as afforestation and agricultural intensification are analyzed throughout the appellation to estimate the impact due to GHG emissions linked to LUCs, based on IPCC standards. On the other hand, trends linked to technological improvements, operational changes, such as changes in the use and management of plant protection agents or fertilizers or the change in the energy sources for machinery on the vineyards, were assessed in detail.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
(Español) Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are regarded as units designed for the efficient removal of organic matter and nutrients from polluted wastewaters, avoiding their discharge into the environment. Despite these benefits, they have also been found to be highly energy intensive, with consequent increased emissions in terms of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts. Therefore, it has become imperative to monitor thoroughly the overall functioning of WWTPs from an integrated perspective with the aim of understanding how these can improve their eco-efficiency. In this case study, a group of 113 WWTPs located in regions across Spain were analysed using the methodology that combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The aim of this work was to determine the operational efficiency of each unit in order to obtain environmental benchmarks for inefficient plants. Thereafter, the environmental gains linked with the inputs reduction proposed for the DEA model for each unit were computed in order to verify eco-efficiency criteria. The operational complexity of WWTPs resulted in several identified factors affecting their efficiency which are discussed in depth, including the size of the facility, the climatic influence, the influent load and the over- or underuse of the plant.
Open linkAuthor(s): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
(Español) In an international context characterised by the promotion of renewable sources to face an increasing energy demand, grape marc is an organic co-product of the vinification process whose potential as an energy source has been underexploited. This study analysed the production chain of grape marc pellets and evaluated, through an attributional Life Cycle Assessment based on primary data from field experiments, the overall environmental performance of using grape marc pellets for heat production, as well as its comparison with alternative fossil and renewable energy resources. A sensitivity analysis was carried out concerning the type of fuel used for drying, the methodological approach to solve multi-functionality, as well as the influence of the water content of grape marc. The combustion and drying of pellets were found to be the main contributors to the environmental impacts, although a crucial influence of methodological choices on co-products management was observed. The use of wood chips for drying and an optimization of the pellets loading rate in the combustion process are the main improvement recommendations. Overall, results showed that the production of pellets from grape marc for heat production purposes is a promising technology from an environmental perspective, which is always superior to alternative fuels at the endpoint impact level. Compared to fossil fuels, its main advantage lies in the reduced contribution to climate change. When compared to mixed wood chips, it has an advantage regarding the contribution of agricultural land occupation. For policy support purposes, however, this study should be complemented by further analyses focussing, for instance, on market-driven consequences of large scale implementation. The results were shown to be dependent on the midpoint and endpoint impact categories. Their comprehensive interpretation led to the overarching clear recommendation to adapt the impact assessment categories and models and the approach to deal with multi-functionality to the geographical and market specificities features and to assure maximum transparency in the communication of results.
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