Identification of decisive factors for greenhouse gas emissions in comparative life cycle assessments of food waste management – an analytical review

2016 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 13-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bernstad Saraiva Schott ◽  
Henrik Wenzel ◽  
Jes la Cour Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Food Waste ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Analytical Review

scholarly journals Embodied GHG Emissions of Wooden Buildings—Challenges of Biogenic Carbon Accounting in Current LCA Methods

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. Andersen ◽  
F. N. Rasmussen ◽  
G. Habert ◽  
H. Birgisdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Carbon Accounting ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Final Sample ◽  
Biogenic Carbon ◽  
Building Life Cycle

Buildings play a vital role in reaching the targets stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Increasing the use of wood in construction is a proposed upcoming strategy to reduce the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of buildings. This study examines existing life cycle assessments of wooden buildings. The aim is to investigate embodied greenhouse gas emission results reported, as well as methodological approaches applied in existing literature. The study applies the protocol for Systematic Literature Reviews and finds 79 relevant papers. From the final sample, the study analyses 226 different scenarios in-depth in terms of embodied emissions, life cycle assessment method, life cycle inventory modelling and biogenic carbon approach. The analysis shows that the average reported values of embodied greenhouse gas emissions of wooden buildings are one-third to half of the embodied emissions reported from buildings in general. Additionally, from the analysis of the final sample we find that the majority of wooden building life cycle assessments apply similar methods and often leave out biogenic carbon from the assessment or simply do not declare it. This implies that the focus on variability in the different methods applied in wooden building life cycle assessments needs to be increased to establish the relationship between methodological choices and embodied emissions of wooden buildings. Further, transparency and conformity in biogenic carbon accounting in life cycle assessments is essential to enhance comparability between life cycle assessment studies and to avoid distortions in embodied GHG emission results.

scholarly journals Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Human Health Trade-Offs of Organic Waste Management Strategies

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (15) ◽  
pp. 9200-9209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah L. Nordahl ◽  
Jay P. Devkota ◽  
Jahon Amirebrahimi ◽  
Sarah Josephine Smith ◽  
Hanna M. Breunig ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Organic Waste ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Organic Waste Management

scholarly journals A Review of Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of Diets: Plant-Based Solutions Are Truly Sustainable, Even in the Form of Fast Foods

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9926
Author(s):  
Anna Kustar ◽  
Dalia Patino-Echeverri
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Water Use ◽  
Dietary Guidelines ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Vegetarian Diets

This paper’s purpose is to shed light on the current understanding of the environmental benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, considering the inclusion of a significant share of processed foods, such as plant-based burgers. We review recent Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of the three main diet types, omnivore, vegetarian, and vegan, and then assesses the environmental impacts of adding two commercial brands of plant-based burgers to vegetarian and vegan diets. The recent literature confirms that compared to omnivore diets adhering to the same dietary guidelines, vegan diets reduce land-use impacts by 50–86%, water use by 22–70%, and greenhouse gas emissions by 21–70%, while vegetarian diets achieve reductions of 27–84% in land use, 15–69% in water use, and 24–56% in greenhouse emissions. The environmental benefits of vegan and vegetarian diets are not affected by the consumption of highly processed plant-based burgers. Consumers reduce land use, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions between 87% and 96% by choosing a Beyond or Impossible burger instead of a regular beef patty. These results are robust to the uncertainties associated with a variety of beef production systems; there is no indication that a situation or condition may make beef burgers more environmentally friendly than these two plant-based alternatives, or that the addition of plant-based meats to vegan and vegetarian diets may reduce their environmental benefits.

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