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Bio-based and biodegradable plastics (BBPs) are innovative materials, wholly or partially produced from biomass, with the potential to enhance the circulation of resources in the biological cycle of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s butterfly diagram. Although BBPs are generally considered more environmental-friendly than conventional plastics, robust scientific evidence is still missing. The lack of tools and metrics to assess the circularity and sustainability of the BBPs industry poses relevant challenges for its upscaling and contribution to climate neutrality goals in Europe. It calls for adopting system and life cycle thinking, guided by multi-level and multi-dimensional examinations, which led researchers to build a comprehensive picture of trends, gaps and future orientations that may boost a sustainable circular bioeconomy in the sector. The value- chain based and multi-faceted SWOT analysis that emerged from the intersection of system and corporate data reveals the need to establish a combined circular bioeconomy strategy where incentives to integrated local supply chain, dedicated EPR scheme, eco-design guidelines, revised EoL standards, new clear labelling schemes and harmonised sustainability criteria should be prioritized and conjointly pursued to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable circular bioeconomy of the BBPs value chain. European Journal of Social Impact and Circular Economy, V. 4 N. 2 (2023)

Nowadays, organic aerogels have arisen as promising materials for different applications such as: building, construction, energy among others, due to their low density, high thermal insulation capacity and high porosity. In the recent years multiple procedures to synthesize them have been developed, however, the freeze-drying method has gained more importance, being considered a cost-competitive, eco-friendly, and efficient process. Therefore, it is fundamental to evaluate its environmental impacts for its future implementation as a sustainable industrial process. In this work, a Life Cycle Assessment on the synthesis of nanoclay reinforced polyvinyl alcohol aerogels by freeze-drying has been carried out. Furthermore, the influence of the production scale (laboratory and pilot line) and the functional unit (1 kg and 1 m3) have been studied. Additionally, different upgrading approaches carried out in the pilot line, energy efficiency and production capacity, have been evaluated. Results demonstrated that better environmental impact values were obtained with pilot line aerogel production in comparison to laboratory scale for both functional units. Regarding the different upgrade assessment with the pilot line, it has been concluded that the background processes and the energy consumption are the main causes for the increment in the environmental impact values during the aerogel synthesis. En la actualidad, los aerogeles orgánicos han surgido como materiales promisorios para diferentes aplicaciones tales como: edificación, construcción, energía entre otras, debido a su baja densidad, alta capacidad de aislamiento térmico y alta porosidad. En los últimos años se han desarrollado múltiples procedimientos para sintetizarlos, sin embargo, el método de liofilización ha ganado mayor importancia, siendo considerado un proceso rentable, amigable con el medio ambiente y eficiente. Por lo tanto, es fundamental evaluar sus impactos ambientales para su futura implementación como un proceso industrial sostenible. En este trabajo se ha llevado a cabo un análisis del ciclo de vida de la síntesis de aerogeles de poli(alcohol vinílico) reforzados con nanoarcillas mediante liofilización. Además, la influencia de la escala de producción (laboratorio y línea piloto) y la unidad funcional (1 kg y 1 m 3) han sido estudiados. Adicionalmente, se han evaluado diferentes enfoques de mejora llevados a cabo en la línea piloto, eficiencia energética y capacidad de producción. Los resultados demostraron que se obtuvieron mejores valores de impacto ambiental con la producción de aerogel en línea piloto en comparación con la escala de laboratorio para ambas unidades funcionales. En cuanto a la evaluación de diferentes actualizaciones con la línea piloto, se ha concluido que los procesos de fondo y el consumo de energía son las principales causas del incremento en los valores de impacto ambiental durante la síntesis del aerogel.

Transport is an important source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Although the applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for transport, also known as intelligent transport systems, are seen as having great potential to help reduce emissions from road transport, their exact impact on CO2 emissions are uncertain for decision makers from government to industry. This uncertainty hinders the deployment of such applications. Therefore there is a need for a common evaluation approach to assess the CO2 impact of ICT measures in a systemic and realistic way. In this study, a methodology framework to evaluate the impact of ICT measures on CO2 emissions is explained. The methodology was developed within the European Union FP7 project Amitran. In particular, this study focuses on the outline and the framework architecture of the methodology as well as the required interfaces between the required models. The use of the methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a use case of dynamic traffic light systems. Finally, the efforts made to validate the methodology and make it accessible to users are explained.

Organic monogastric agriculture is challenged because of a limited availability of regional and organic protein-rich ingredients to fulfill the amino acid requirements. The development of novel feed ingredients is therefore essential. The use of starfish (Asterias rubens), mussel (Mytilus edilus), insect, green and brown seaweed, and forage crop extracts exhibits different approaches to increase protein availability in a sustainable manner through improving the protein quality of existing ingredients, better use of under- or unutilized material, or development of circular bioeconomy. This review assessed limitations and opportunities of producing, processing, and using these novel ingredients in feed. The use of non-renewable resources and the effect on the environment of production and processing the feed ingredients are described. Protein concentration and amino acid quality of the feed ingredients are evaluated to understand their substitution potential compared with protein-rich soya bean and fishmeal. Feedstuffs’ effect on digestibility and animal performance is summarized. With the exception of seaweed, all novel ingredients show potential to partly substitute fishmeal or soya bean fulfilling part of the protein requirement in organic monogastric production. However, improvements during production and processing can be made to enhance protein quality, sustainability of the novel ingredients, and nutrient utilization of novel feed ingredients.

The transition to low carbon energy systems poses challenges in terms of energy efficiency. In building refurbishment projects, efficient technologies such as smart controls and heat pumps are increasingly being used as a substitute for conventional technologies with the aim of reducing carbon emissions and determining operational energy and cost savings, together with other benefits. Measured building performance, however, often reveals a significant gap between the predicted energy use (design stage) and actual energy use (operation stage). For this reason, lean and interpretable digital twins are needed for building energy monitoring aimed at persistence of savings and continuous performance improvement. In this research, interpretable regression models are built with data at multiple temporal resolutions (monthly, daily and hourly) and seamlessly integrated with the goal of verifying the performance improvements due to Smart thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) and gas absorption heat pumps (GAHPs) as well as giving insights on the performance of the building as a whole. Further, as part of modelling research, time of week and temperature (TOWT) approach is reformulated and benchmarked against its original implementation. The case study chosen is Hale Court sheltered housing, located in the city of Portsmouth (UK). This building has been used for the field-testing of innovative technologies such as TRVs and GAHPs within the EU Horizon 2020 project THERMOSS. The results obtained are used to illustrate possible extensions of the use of energy signature modelling, highlighting implications for energy management and innovative building technologies development.

Abstract Purpose Investigating potential social and socio-economic impacts should play a key role for the development of sustainable mobility alternatives. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is becoming increasingly important to ensure holistic sustainability assessments. The present work aims at identifying and evaluating social and socio-economic impact subcategories in S-LCA. A novel participatory approach implying all concerned stakeholders is proposed to select relevant impact subcategories and thus contribute to a thorough interpretation of S-LCA results. It is applied to assess electric and conventional vehicles. Methodology This paper describes a comprehensive step-by-step S-LCA framework. The innovation of this work consists in defining a structured S-LCA framework integrating a systematic approach based on two stages: (1) a sectorial risk analysis for the identification of impact subcategories and (2) a participatory approach for their prioritization. The proposed participatory approach considers all concerned stakeholders to enable the selection of the most relevant impact subcategories. A set of social inventory indicators is attributed to subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. These are used to perform the social evaluation and carry out a full analysis in the result interpretation allowing thus to integrate a multi-actor perspective to the materiality assessment. Results The defined S-LCA framework is implemented to compare two mobility scenarios, corresponding to electric and conventional vehicle technologies. A new set of mobility-related impact subcategories is proposed for users’ stakeholder. Following the new designed participatory approach, subcategories for all stakeholders are prioritized according to different actors’ perceptions. For example, “safe and healthy living conditions,” “local employment,” and “delocalization and migration” were perceived for local communities as the most relevant subcategories by the different consulted stakeholders (industrial, academic, and public actors and users). These results also showed that social significance varies depending on the consulted actors and on the geographical area of the study. Using PSILCA database, we have investigated the subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. Results for the evaluation and interpretation phases are presented for both transportation technologies. Conclusions This approach aims at increasing local relevance of S-LCA results and their representativeness. Results for the considered mobility scenarios have demonstrated the need to extend the scope of the materiality assessment, generally used for determining subcategories’ social significance from a single stakeholder perspective, by involving other stakeholders into the prioritization stage. Moreover, the proposed comprehensive S-LCA framework integrating the participatory approach is general enough to be applied to other product systems and sectors.