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This article summarizes the panel session “Life Cycle Management approaches to support Circular Economy” of the 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM2017 conference, Luxembourg). Four panellists were invited to share their point of view on this topic. Each of them brought a different perspective, addressing the topic from both the academic and industrial point of view; focusing on a raw materials aspect or considering a life cycle (or eco-design) related scope; in the context of a certification process (for products or activities) or of an eco-innovation process (including new business models for circular economy). After short presentation by each of the panellists, the discussion especially addressed the complementarity between several LCM concepts to be considered jointly when developing circular concepts and models.

As the end of life products are becoming more and more complex, the recycling systems encountered many difficulties in valuing all the materials contained in each product. This involves not only recovering a large number of materials but also doing so with the minimal environmental impact. Although the benefits of recycling are well established, the industrial processes need to be designed in regard with their environmental impacts. Therefore recyclers need robust assessment tools to make the right choices during the design of recycling processes. This approach should enable them to choose the right recycling solutions for a wide range of end of life products. In this article, we present a methodology developped for evaluating the performance of recycling processes during their design phase. This methodology is our answer to help the optimisation of the recycling of multi materials products based on the evaluation of the sustainability performance of the processes chosen.

This paper synthesizes the authors’ experience in the area of integrated approaches coupling multi-objective optimization (MOO), industrial process modeling and simulation, and life cycle assessment (LCA), with particular application to the sector of drinking water production. An industrial process is intended as any process using a certain technology to produce a product or deliver a service. The paper discusses comparatively the suitability for the optimization of a real-world drinking water production plant (DWPP) of four optimization approaches, namely: (1) off-the-shelf global search metaheuristic algorithms, (2) hybrid optimizers combining global search and local search, (3) surrogate model based optimizers, and (4) local search.

Although circular initiatives emerge around the world, the process of decoupling the economic activity from resource consumption and environmental impacts is far of being achieved. The concept of circular economy embodies the opportunity to reconcile an improved resource use while reducing the environmental footprint. Appropriate assessment metrics and methodologies are needed to identify potential trade-off between these 2 sides of a single coin. In this paper, we apply the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to analyse tires end-of-life strategies aiming at improving the circular flow of all tire materials. Results reveal re-treading is interesting to produce trade-offs on environmental impacts while re-grooving offers a fully decoupled strategy that improves material circularity avoiding environmental burdens. Further improvements should integrate environmental assessment as well as economic factors to link micro scale to macro scale contributions to sustainable development.

In a circular society, material consumption should be a circular process where renewable resources and waste streams are used for new bio-based materials. In such a society, bio-based materials are also reused, repaired, recycled, and remanufactured. Not only choices on resources, but also other life cycle choices pertaining to circularity must be done based on technological, environmental and economic basis. For this session, presentations and discussions regarding life cycle management of bio-based materials were suggested. The session had five oral presentations and six poster presentations that gave a general picture of a broader environmental and a positive economic result on a life cycle basis when renewable raw materials are used, while further exploration of the technical aspects within circularity and end-of-life challenges are needed in the future.

European policies are advocating a transition toward “bio-economy”, an economy aiming at reducing the dependence from fossil-based resources, limiting greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts, safeguarding food security and ensuring a sustainable economic growth. Besides, circular economy policies are aiming at closing the loop of resources as much as possible. The application of circular economy principles to bio-economy could represent a valuable contribution to bio-economy performance optimisation. The present paper investigates the contribution of bio-economy to circular economy. It proposes a conceptual framework to assess the potential for circularity for bio-waste and related by-products and it puts forward some considerations on the application of this framework to food waste. However, both bio-economy and circular economy may imply environmental burdens if an integrated assessment encompassing all life cycle stages of production and consumption is missing. Hence, adopting life cycle assessment is crucial to unveil trade-offs and ensuring identifying the best options for bio-economy and circular economy implementation.

This session demonstrated the added-value of applying Life Cycle Assessment to address different types of issues related to the textiles sector. Each of the four presentations in the session was based on case-studies, also highlighted the important challenges to be faced regarding methodological issues and market issues, to make LCA fully efficient for the sector. In particular, it has been demonstrated that one of the main concern for the sector is toxicity assessment, which is currently limited due to lack of data inducing weaknesses in characterisation of substances contributing to this impact. It also has been shown that in the objective of developing circular models, multiple issues must be addressed simultaneously. For example, to increase recycling of clothing unsuitable for reuse, markets must be developed at the same time that infrastructure is developed and collection mechanisms are put in place. It must also be tackled in a sustainable way, supported by Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing.

Cotton, the most important cash crop of India plays a dominant role in its agrarian and industrial economy. In India, the area under cotton cultivation is the highest in the world and industry provides livelihood to over seven million people. However, cotton productivity in India is low and farmers rely on heavy dosage of fertilizers and insecticides/pesticides to control insects, pests, weeds and growth regulators. Organic cotton farming is the process of growing cotton without the use of synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), is a concept to grow cotton with judicious use of water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, to reduce the environmental footprint of cotton farming. The objective of the study was to quantify the environmental benefits associated with the production of organic seed cotton and BCI seed cotton compared to the conventional production of seed cotton, using Life Cycle Assessment approach. The aim was also to identify hotspots across the cultivation process. The study was based on primary data collected from farming sites managed by Arvind Group under contract farming model for BCI cotton and organic cotton cultivation in the state of Maharashtra, India. When compared with the conventional cotton system, the organic and BCI cotton show considerable advantage for several impacts categories.

Despite growing concerns over the environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within the pharma-sector remains quite fragmentary. The aim of this paper is to present gaps and challenges, impeding a full adoption of LCA in the pharma-sector. A review of existing pharma-LCAs revealed a considerable degree of inconsistency and inhomogeneity in their methodological choices, highlighting the need for product category rules (PCRs) for the pharmaceutical industry to harmonize and facilitate the future use of LCA in that sector. Additionally, existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods fail to model several pharma-specific impact pathways (e.g. endocrine disruption). Preliminary thoughts on the development of pharma-PCRs and the inclusion of pharma-specific impact pathways into LCIA are presented, providing important stimulus for further research.

Novo Nordisk has used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for many years and a few years ago the company took a major step forward and completed a mapping of the product carbon footprint of the company’s key products. Through successful cross-organisational collaboration, technical LCA data and results have been translated into easy-to-understand messages that have helped the organisation to understand the LCA concept, drive improvements across the life cycle and to communicate about the environmental impact of products to external stakeholders such as patients, healthcare professionals, payers and policy-makers.