Sara Toniolo

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is recognized as a scientifically based tool for exploring the environmental burdens of a product system. Modeling in LCA can be classified into attributional and consequential, two different perspectives to set the system boundaries and to perform life cycle inventory (LCI). This entry regards consequential LCA, which captures the environmental impacts associated with a product system beyond physical relationships and includes the changes that can occur along a life cycle and even beyond. Applying the consequential perspective, the environmental impacts are assessed considering how environmentally relevant physical flows vary in response to possible decisions in demand and supply. An overview is provided, starting from the main differences compared to the attributional modeling approach, presenting its origin and the main current applications. The key features are summarized, and its applicability to examine multifunctionality and rebound effects is presented. Finally, the main aspects regarding the choice of data are described.

Editorial: Sustainable life cycle assessment scenarios: Decision making perspectives

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and related tools are commonly used to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of waste treatment scenarios. This manuscript presents a mini-review of studies published over the last 10 years in Italy and aims to investigate how life cycle thinking tools are applied to assess the environmental sustainability of local-level waste policies. Results reveal that different waste flows, technologies and policies have been investigated independently and in varying detail. Review suggests that boundary selection significantly affects LCA results; integration of different waste systems is therefore crucial to avoid spatial or temporal shifts of environmental impacts. Moreover, the description of methodological characteristics, limitations and transversal aspects of Italian waste management studies allows various stakeholders to assess the reliability of past and future research for waste policy planning and rebound effects prevention. This review also highlights the need to define minimum requirements of transparency and ease of reporting of the studies to private and public stakeholders. Finally, the paper investigates whether using both the organisational LCA and the life cycle sustainability approach for the overall waste management process may be useful to develop a standard method to address multi-functionalities and multiple sites.