The main goal of DESIRE is to develop and apply an optimal set of indicators to monitor European progress towards resource-efficiency. This is done through a combination of time series of environmentally extended input output data (EE IO) and the DPSIR framework to construct the indicator set. This approach will use a single data set that allows for consistent construction of resource efficiency indicators capturing the EU, country, sector and product group level, and the production and consumption perspective including impacts outside the EU. The project
a) improves data availability, particularly by creating EE IO time series and now-casted data using Eurostat data and data from research databases.
b) improves calculation methods for indicators that currently still lack scientific robustness, most notably in the field of biodiversity/ecosystem services and critical materials. Novel reference indicators for economic success (‘Beyond GDP and Value added’) are developed.
c) explicitly addresses the problem of indicator proliferation and limits in available data that have a ‘statistical stamp’. Via scientific analysis the smallest set of indicators giving mutually independent information is selected, and it is demonstrated which shortcuts in (statistical) data inventory can be made without significant loss of quality.
The project comprises further policy analysis and indicator concept development in support of sustainability monitoring at the EU level and as such is related to the CREEA project. See also our presentation for SETAC Europe 24th Annual Meeting.
Reports for the project written by or with contributions by 2.-0 LCA consultants are:
Physical/hybrid supply use tables - methodological-report
D5.2 Interim report on data processing creating EE IO time series and now-casted data
D5.3 Integrated report on EE IO related macro resource indicator time series
D10.2 Final report with indicator framework, indicator set and implementation roadmap
See also two central publications in Journal of Industrial Ecology: Methodology for the construction of global multi-regional hybrid supply and use tables for the EXIOBASE v3 database and EXIOBASE 3: Developing a time series of detailed environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables.
Very often the fate of chemicals after use is to be sent to municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Current LCI models typically reflect the average conditions in WWTPs, rather than the specific fate of particular chemicals. However, different chemicals behave differently in WWTPs, depending on their physical-chemical properties and biodegradability. An accurate modelling of the life cycle impacts of chemicals requires taking into account this specific behaviour in a WWTP, namely whether a chemical will be either degraded, volatilized, partitioned to sludge, discharged unchanged, or a combination of these. There were no available LCI models to solve this particular problem.
Besides the issue of specific chemicals in wastewater, LCA practitioners often only have access to a limited set of pollution descriptors to describe a wastewater, such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), suspended solids (SS) or total nitrogen. Even in this case, the available LCI tools/models to address the impact of this pollution are far from complete.
Last but not least, available models often reflect wastewater disposal practices in developed countries, where connection to WWTPs is widespread. There are no available LCI models tackling the reality of wastewater management diversity around the world, especially in developing countries.
The development of WW LCI provided a solution to all these shortcomings.
2.-0 LCA consultants started in 2015 an initiative to develop a model and tool to address the impact of chemicals in wastewater. The result of this effort is WW LCI, an Excel-based model that calculates life cycle inventories of wastewater discharges, including the following aspects (see also figures 1 and 2):
Figure 1. An overview of the foreground processes included in WW LCI.
Figure 2. Geographical coverage of the country database in WW LCI.
WW LCI has been the subject of two peer-reviewed publications (ref 1, ref 2) and seven presentations at international conferences (ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9). Below you can access the latest documentation for WW LCI:
WW LCI v.5_Model documentation_20250107
WW LCI v5_user manual_20250107
WW LCI is an extremely versatile tool, which can be used to obtain inventories for LCA studies addressing either wastewater systems as such, or the end-of-life stage of products involving the production of wastewater, e.g. cleaning products, personal-care products, industrial chemicals, food production and even human excretion. To give you an idea of what can be done, below we provide some random examples of applications where WW LCI is fully capable of providing life cycle inventories (once the user defines the wastewater composition) for more than 100 countries:
See a webinar (1.5 hour) on the model from our YouTube channel:
And a presentation about the new features in the latest model version WW LCI v5 also on YouTube.
The Wastewater LCI initiative is open to everyone. Subscription grants access to the excel-based tool WW LCI and a helpdesk to solve your problems when you start using it.
To go to the club and see pricing click here.
I januar 2004 startede R98 en forsøgsordning på Christianshavn og i Husum, hvor udvalgte drikkevareemballager af plast og metal kan bortskaffes via det eksisterende kubesystem for genanvendeligt glas. Formålet med forsøgsordningen omfatter:
I denne rapport foretages en livscyklusvurdering af, hvis forsøgsordningen implementeres i hele Københavns Kommune.
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The objective of the present Deliverable 6-4 is to document the applied model.
The objective of the present Deliverable 6-3 is to present a contribution analysis, an uncertainty assessment,
the results of identifying priority material flows and wastes for waste prevention, recycling and choice of
waste treatment options as well as policy recommendations.
The objective of the present deliverable D6-2 is to document 25-year forecasts of the cumulated physical stocks, waste generation, and environmental impacts for each scenario for EU-27.
The objective of the present Deliverable 6-1 is to document the data consolidation and calibration exercise, and the scenario parameterisation.
The main goal of CREEA was to refine and elaborate economic and environmental accounting principles as discussed in the London Group and consolidated in the future SEEA 2012, to test them in practical data gathering, to troubleshoot and refine approaches, and show added value of having such harmonized data available via case studies. The project included work and experiences from major previous projects focused on developing harmonized data sets for integrated economic and environmental accounting (most notably EXIOPOL, FORWAST and a series of EUROSTAT projects in Environmental Accounting). Most data gathered in CREEA were consolidated in the form of Environmentally Extended Supply and Use tables (EE SUT) and update and expand the EXIOPOL database. In this way, CREEA produced a global Multi-Regional EE SUT with a unique detail of 130 sectors and products, 30 emissions, 80 natural resources, and 43 countries plus a rest of world. A unique contribution of CREEA was that also SUT in physical terms were created.
The CREEA project demonstrates a full integration of global mass flow, energy flow, emissions, land-use and economic accounts which all together are used to create a multi-regional hybrid life cycle inventory database. The integrated approach in the CREEA project yielded a global multi-regional trade-linked hybrid LCA database, which involved detailed global and national energy, mass and monetary balances for products as well as industries. It is recommended to use such databases should be the starting point of any LCA database.
Read more in CREEA-report 4.1, CREEA-report 4.2, CREEA-report 4.3 and CREEA-report 6.2 or the CREEA-booklet; see also our presentation for SETAC Europe 24th Annual Meeting: Full integration of LCA with other assessment tools – new application areas and harmonized modelling approaches and the presentation at LCAFood 2014: Life cycle assessment of the global food consumption. Read our paper in Sustainability: Global Sustainability Accounting – Developing EXIOBASE for Multi-Regional Footprint Analysis.
The Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) sector has developed considerably during the past century, paving the way for maximum resource (materials and energy) recovery and minimising environmental impacts such as global warming associated with it. The current study is assessing the historical development of MSWM in the municipality of Aalborg, Denmark throughout the period of 1970 to 2010, and its implications regarding Global Warming Potential (GWP100), using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Historical data regarding MSW composition, and different treatment technologies such as incineration, recycling and composting has been used in order to perform the analysis. The LCA results show a continuous improvement in environmental performance of MSWM from 1970 to 2010 mainly due to the changes in treatment options, improved efficiency of various treatment technologies and increasing focus on recycling, resulting in a shift from net emission of 618 kg CO2-eq. tonne-1 of MSWM.
Wastewater reclamation in a petroleum refinery in Turkey was evaluated with life cycle assessment (LCA). The goal of the study was to determine whether or not refinery wastewater reclamation for different industrial purposes, namely boiler feedwater, cooling water and fire water, leads to an overall benefit across different environmental aspects, besides alleviating freshwater resources, when compared to current wastewater disposal practices.
The basis for the assessment was the hypothetical scale-up of a demonstration plant tested with real wastewaters from November 2018 to May 2019 at the Izmit petroleum refinery operated by Tüpraş. This demonstration plant consisted of different treatment modules, including dissolved air flotation, ceramic membrane bioreactor, catalytic wet-air oxidation, advanced oxidation with ozone and hydrogen peroxide, and reverse osmosis.
The LCA was conducted following consequential modelling principles, and six environmental indicators were analysed in detail at midpoint level: global warming, respiratory inorganics, marine ecotoxicity, aquatic eutrophication, freshwater consumption and non-renewable energy demand. All three reclamation scenarios (boiler, cooling, fire water) succeeded in achieving a life-cycle freshwater saving, of around 1 m3 freshwater saved per m3 refinery wastewater. Beneficial results were also obtained in marine ecotoxicity and aquatic eutrophication, where impact is reduced up to 90% and 84%, respectively. With regard to global warming and non-renewable energy demand, only the boiler feedwater application appeared to involve an improvement over wastewater disposal, showing a net reduction of 2.2 kg CO2-eq and 40 MJ per m3 wastewater, respectively, thanks to potential thermal energy savings. For cooling makeup water and fire water, impacts were between 2 and 2.5 times higher in these two indicators when compared to wastewater disposal.
Finally, the indicator on respiratory inorganic effects, showed higher impact, by a factor 2 to 7, for all reuse scenarios, due to electricity demand, which is linked to the Turkish electricity production mix with a substantial contribution from coal power plants. Thus, the results reflect that achieving a product water of very high quality comes at the price of a high energy demand. Nevertheless, A sensitivity analysis shows that the environmental performance of all scenarios would improve to a great extent when shifting to an electricity mix with a higher share of renewables, as is the current trend in most European countries.
