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Mass, enthalpy, and chemical‐derived emission flows in mineral processing J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Seth Kane, Sabbie A. Miller
The production of materials from mineral resources is a significant contributor to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This contribution is driven primarily by chemical CO2 emissions from the conversion of mineral resources and emissions tied to energy demands for material processing. In this work, we synthesize the thermodynamically required enthalpy and chemically derived emissions of mineral processing
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Embodied GHG of missing middle: Residential building form and strategies for more efficient housing J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Keagan Hudson Rankin, Aldrick Arceo, Kaan Isin, Shoshanna Saxe
This research addresses two critical problems facing communities today: the growing demand for housing and the need to reduce material consumption to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Material production and use accounts for more than 25% of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and must be reduced to meet the Paris Climate Agreement's 2°C target. At the same time, increasing urban populations
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Reassessing tin circularity and criticality J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Jessie E. Bradley, Willem L. Auping, René Kleijn, Jan H. Kwakkel, Benjamin Sprecher
Tin is an important metal for society with a high risk of supply disruptions. It is, therefore, classified as a critical material in many parts of the world. An exception is the European Union, for which tin was classified as a non-critical material in 2023. However, there are many discrepancies in the literature regarding the definitions and values of the indicators used to determine tin criticality
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Biodiversity impact of food waste: Quantification for supply chain stages and products in Germany J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Jakob Bogenreuther, Thomas Kastner, Felicitas Schneider, Thomas Koellner
Reducing food waste could lower pressures on land resources and thereby contribute to the mitigation of global biodiversity loss. The reduction of food waste and biodiversity loss are also specified in the Sustainable Development Goals 12.3 and 15 of the United Nations. However, which supply chain stages and food products to target with policy measures is hardly known. Especially, a differentiation
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Returnable packaging systems and store operations: Processes, costs, and benefits J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Ina Marie Raible, Christina Holweg, Gerald Reiner, Christoph Teller
Returnable packaging systems (RPS) related to consumer products help to reduce problematic plastic and glass waste in supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to investigate distribution and return processes and the related cost drivers and benefits of returnable packaging with a deposit refund system in retail stores. Through the lens of the actor–network theory and based on 30 interviews with
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Bottom-up dynamics in circular innovation systems: The perspective of circular start-ups J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Marvin Henry, Julian Kirchherr, Rob Raven, Marko Hekkert
The concept of circular economy (CE) is proposed to lead humanity toward a sustainable future. Public authorities increasingly build on CE narratives. The progress of private sector actors is key to enable more circular resource flows. Still, the world falls far short from becoming circular and large-scale implementation of CE in actual problem–solution spaces is scarce. This study sheds light into
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Unfolding the human–material interaction of material flows in societies: DNA as a conceptual metaphor J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Lauri Alkki, Jarmo Uusikartano, Eeva L. Pohls, Sami Rusthollkarhu, Leena Aarikka-Stenroos
The management of material flows in societies is complex yet crucial for the sustainable coexistence of humans and materials. While industrial ecology (IE) has long examined material flows, studies acknowledging their sociomaterial nature are scarce. Consequently, the existing IE research has not yet answered why materials flow in societies as they do. This study therefore examines human–material interaction
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Linking socio-economic metabolism models and simulation games: Reflections on benefits and challenges J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Marta Roca-Puigròs, Andreas Gerber, Markus Ulrich, Matthias Y. Reich, Daniel Beat Müller, Patrick Wäger
Simulation models of socio-economic metabolisms (SEM) are increasingly used to address questions regarding environmental issues. SEM studies often focus on target audiences such as researchers and decision-makers by means of scientific articles, reports, and oral presentations. In this contribution, we study the linkage of SEM models and simulation games (SGs) (i) to widen the audience of SEM research
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Spatial patterns of built structures co-determine nations’ level of resource demand J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Juan Antonio Duro, Alejandro Perez-Laborda, Markus Löw, Sarah Matej, Barbara Plank, Fridolin Krausmann, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Helmut Haberl
Societies’ use of material resources is increasingly recognized as a key factor behind sustainability problems. The mass of materials used per capita and year differs substantially between countries. However, a limited range of variables (mostly per-capita gross domestic product [GDP]) were analyzed to explain this variation. Spatial patterns of cities influence their resource use, but the role of
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Assessing circularity of wastewater treatment systems: A critical review of indicators J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Caroline Samberger, Sanaz Imen, Katerina Messologitis, Arthur Umble, Joseph G. Jacangelo
Global energy demand, water demand, and raw materials extraction are major challenges for society as population grows. While a traditional linear economy approach leads to depletion of finite resources, damage to the Earth's ecosystems, and adverse impacts on human health, a paradigm shift toward implementation of circular economy principles is paramount to the reversal of world resources' exhaustion
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City-scale assessment of the material and environmental footprint of buildings using an advanced building information model: A case study from Canberra, Australia J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Natthanij Soonsawad, Raymundo Marcos-Martinez, Heinz Schandl
As cities grow, demand for urban materials is set to rise. Meeting sustainability targets will require transformative changes to how cities are constructed. Yet, accurate information on embodied building materials and their environmental impacts at the city scale is still lacking. We use Light Detection and Ranging data, building archetype information, and statistical models to estimate the embodied
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Categorization of manufacturing companies’ readiness profiles for the transition to the circular economy: A multidimensional cluster analysis J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Thayla Zomer, Tim McAloone, Daniela Pigosso
The circular economy (CE) field has moved from purely conceptual research into empirical studies. However, the literature does not provide generalized conclusions regarding the overall state of CE transition in manufacturing companies. Existing studies lack a perspective in explaining differences among companies planning or already transitioning to the CE because most empirical research so far is based
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Australia's circular economy metrics and indicators J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Alessio Miatto, Nargessadat Emami, Kylie Goodwin, James West, Mohammad Sadegh Taskhiri, Thomas Wiedmann, Heinz Schandl
This article presents a comprehensive economy-wide material flow analysis of the Australian economy in 2019, examining the domestic extraction, trade, end-of-life flows, and recycling for all materials. The results highlight Australia's role as a natural resource supplier, with metals and fossil fuels being primary contributors. Through material flow analysis, we found that in 2019 Australia extracted
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Electric and gasoline vehicle total cost of ownership across US cities J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Maxwell Woody, Shawn A. Adderly, Rushabh Bohra, Gregory A. Keoleian
Vehicle electrification can significantly decarbonize the transportation sector. Widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) depends on their cost relative to conventional alternatives. Here we compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of gasoline, hybrid, and electric vehicles. First, we review previous TCO studies, showing that the components (e.g., purchase price, financing, taxes, fees, insurance
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Model uncertainty versus variability in the life cycle assessment of commercial fisheries J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Giovanni Codotto, Massimo Pizzol, Troels J. Hegland, Niels Madsen
Results from life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are sensitive to modeling choices and data used in building the underlying model. This is also relevant for the case of fisheries and LCAs of fish products. Fisheries' product systems show both multifunctionality because of the simultaneous co-catch of multiple species and potential constraints to supply due to natural stock limits or socially established
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Unlocking the potential of the bioeconomy for climate change reduction: The optimal use of lignocellulosic biomass in Germany J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Sebastian Lubjuhn, Sandra Venghaus
The concept of a circular bioeconomy has become a new economic leitmotif for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Its central narrative rests on the idea of replacing fossil resources with biobased ones for a broad spectrum of products including, for example, heat, electricity, fuels, plastics, or chemicals. Yet, the amount of available bio-resources is limited, rendering some technologies successful
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The dynamic characteristics of multi-media carbon pollution and their spatial influencing factors: A case study of the Greater Bay Area of China J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Chen Chen, Zongguo Wen
For urban agglomerations that contain multiple interconnected cities, carbon pollution mitigation is particularly challenging due to the complex pollution transfer among environmental media and among cities. Insufficient attention has been paid to the city-level metabolic processes of carbon in diverse physicochemical forms and their spatial interactions, impeding the identification and management
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Prospective life cycle assessment of sodium-ion batteries made from abundant elements J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Sanna Wickerts, Rickard Arvidsson, Anders Nordelöf, Magdalena Svanström, Patrik Johansson
Batteries are enablers for reducing fossil-fuel dependency and climate-change impacts. In this study, a prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) of large-scale production of two different sodium-ion battery (SIB) cells is performed with a cradle-to-gate system boundary. The SIB cells modeled have Prussian white cathodes and hard carbon anodes based only on abundant elements and thus constitute potentially
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Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Arjuna Nebel, Alexander Kling, Ruben Willamowski, Tim Schell
After 50 years, there is still an ongoing debate about the Limits to Growth (LtG) study. This paper recalibrates the 2005 World3-03 model. The input parameters are changed to better match empirical data on world development. An iterative method is used to compute and optimize different parameter sets. This improved parameter set results in a World3 simulation that shows the same overshoot and collapse
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Circular life cycle sustainability assessment: An integrated framework J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Anna Luthin, Marzia Traverso, Robert H. Crawford
Robust monitoring and assessment methods are required to assess circular economy (CE) concepts in terms of their degree of circularity and their contribution to sustainability. This research aimed to develop an integrated framework for the CE context—considering both the technical circularity and the complexity of the three dimensions of sustainability (environment, economy, and social). Two existing
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Recycled or reusable: A multi-method assessment of eco-friendly packaging in online retail J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Britta Frommeyer, Julia Koch, Carla Scagnetti, Manuel Lorenz, Gerhard Schewe
The rapid growth of online retail increases the demand for packaging. Although packaging is necessary to fulfill logistic and marketing functions, it fosters the depletion of resources, is often used carelessly, and thus negatively impacts the environment. Eco-friendly packaging variants could provide a solution to this problem. Since many stakeholders must be involved to promote their use, this study
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The circular economy growth machine: A critical perspective on “post-growth” and “pro-growth” circularity approaches J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Felix Carl Schultz, Ingo Pies
This forum article contributes to the prospering debate in the circular economy (CE) community discussing whether—and to what extent—the CE is reconcilable with economic growth. Within this discourse about a functional CE, there exist two contesting perspectives. One argues in favor of pro-growth circularity, the other in favor of post-growth circularity. The aim of this article is to develop a line
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Life cycle assessment of prospective trajectories: A parametric approach for tailor-made inventories and its computational implementation J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-27 Mélanie Douziech, Romain Besseau, Raphaël Jolivet, Bianka Shoai-Tehrani, Jean-Yves Bourmaud, Guillaume Busato, Mathilde Gresset-Bourgeois, Paula Pérez-López
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a standardized, holistic, and multi-criteria approach to estimate the environmental impacts of a system over its entire lifecycle. Modeling the environmental impacts of future scenarios and evolving systems in LCA is challenging due to lack of knowledge around technological evolutions and changing backgrounds influencing the foreground system. The method proposed here
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Sustainability transitions require an understanding of smaller cities J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Eugene Mohareb, Daniela Perrotti
As we approach an era where more than 60% of the global population lives in cities, urban areas must be our focal point in the transition to the flourishing societies of future decades. While much attention has been paid to understanding urban consumption patterns over the past decade, the overwhelming majority of recent urban metabolism research has focused on larger cities with populations over 1
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Embodied carbon quantification of luminaires using life cycle assessment and CIBSE TM65 methodologies: A comparison case study J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-13 Irene Mazzei, Ruth Saint, Alistair Kay, Francesco Pomponi
The European legislative landscape on sustainability is steadily growing to meet objectives to reach net zero targets by mid-century. In this context, companies and manufacturers may soon be legally required to provide quantification of the environmental impact of their products and services. A key challenge is applying a consistent and robust methodology that ensures comparability between assessments
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Life cycle assessment of pig iron production from bauxite residue: A European case study J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-13 Yan Ma, Johan Berg Pettersen
Large volumes of bauxite residue are generated when alumina is leached from bauxite ore, within 2–3 metric tons of bauxite residue per metric ton final aluminum. The large volumes make bauxite residue an interesting source for secondary materials, for instance iron. This paper assesses environmental impacts associated with extraction of pig iron from bauxite residue in Europe. The life cycle assessment
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The role of supply chains for the sustainability transformation of global food systems: A large-scale, systematic review of food cold chains J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-13 Philipp A. Trotter, Tristan Becker, Renaldi Renaldi, Xinfang Wang, Radhika Khosla, Grit Walther
Global food systems need an urgent transformation to be compatible with sustainable development. While much of the recent academic discussion has focused on food production and consumption, food supply chains have received considerably less attention. Here, we conduct a large-scale, systematic literature review of 48,014 academic articles to assess the links between the food cold chain literature and
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Product repair in a circular economy: Exploring public repair behavior from a systems perspective J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-13 Keshav Parajuly, James Green, Jessika Richter, Michael Johnson, Jana Rückschloss, Jef Peeters, Ruediger Kuehr, Colin Fitzpatrick
Repair practices are driven not only by consumers’ internal motivation, but also by external infrastructural, social including cultural, financial, and political factors. We explore these factors with the goal of understanding the public repair of electrical and electronic products (e-products) from a systems perspective to help devise appropriate change interventions. We document (a) behavioral aspects
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Chinese cities exhibit diverse allometric growth patterns in material metabolism J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-13 Mingyue Yang, Ningyin Liu, Xinjing Wang, Yan Zhang
Rapid urbanization boosts the material demand of cities and leads to serious environmental problems, such as water shortage and air pollution. To achieve better governance of cities, stakeholders need to deeply understand urban material utilization. Taking 327 cities in China as examples, this study analyzes the urban material characteristics from a metabolic perspective. We investigated the spatiotemporal
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Consumer practices regarding the purchase, use, willingness to repair, and disposal of small electric and electronic equipment: A Spanish survey on kettles J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Sonia Sandez, Valeria Ibáñez-Forés, Victoria Pérez-Belis, Pablo Juan, María D. Bovea
Repair is one of the main strategies to extend the lifetime of products in the circular economy framework. With the aim of identifying current consumer practices toward the purchase, use, and end of life of electric and electronic equipment (EEE), including willingness to repair, maintenance, and final disposal, a survey is designed and implemented online, taking kettles as an application case. Regarding
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“A fine wine, better with age”: Circular economy historical roots and influential publications: A bibliometric analysis using Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-03 Chembessi Chedrak, Gohoungodji Paulin, Juste Rajaonson
In this study, we used the Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) method to explore the historical roots and influential publications of circular economy (CE) studies. Unlike traditional literature reviews, this method allows us to analyze frequently cited works over specified years, assisting in tracing the growth of research subjects over time and quantifying the impact of these citations
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Carbon-neutral pathways to 2050 for Japan's aviation industry in the absence of a mass supply of sustainable aviation fuels J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Minami Kito, Hirotaka Takayabu, Keisuke Nansai
The global aviation sector must reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to achieve its 2050 net-zero emissions target. Although the current pathway to the target considers an increase in aviation demand following the COVID-19 pandemic, emissions can be offset by the introduction of future technologies such as electric and hydrogen aircraft and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). However, the commercialization
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Characterizing the spatiotemporal evolution of building material stock in China's Greater Bay Area: A statistical regression method J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Liang Yuan, Weisheng Lu, Yijie Wu
More than half of the materials extracted from natural environments eventually accumulate as building material stock (BMS). From a linear-to-circular economy perspective, BMS transforms the building sector from a virgin material consumer and a waste generator to a future depository of secondary resources. Studies characterizing the amount and distribution of BMS adopt different approaches, but high
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Using quantitative storytelling to identify constraints in resource supply: The case of brown seaweed J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Maddalen Ayala, Marianne Thomsen, Massimo Pizzol
Seaweed is increasingly considered a promising resource to produce high-value products such as bioplastics due to potential environmental benefits such as carbon uptake and no land-use change. However, the environmental assessment of emerging technologies for producing bioplastic from seaweed remains challenging due to the difficulties in modeling future seaweed supply and demand. Within the consequential
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Seven decades of plastic flows and stocks in the United States and pathways toward zero plastic pollution by 2050 J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Mengqing Kan, Chunyan Wang, Bing Zhu, Wei-Qiang Chen, Yi Liu, Yucheng Ren, Ming Xu
The United States is the world's second-largest producer and consumer of plastics and the largest producer of plastic waste. Understanding the sources, drivers, and destinations of plastic production, consumption, and waste is critical for the United States to develop strategies toward a zero-plastic pollution future. Here, we characterize the dynamic material flows and stocks of plastics in the United
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Structural attribution of emissions along the global supply chain and implications for climate policy J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Shohei Tokito, Tesshu Hanaka, Fumiya Nagashima
To develop and implement effective policies to mitigate climate change, it is important to understand the emission profile of sectors that comprise the network of global supply chains. Focusing on the relationship between sectors’ positions in the global supply chain, this study develops a structural position analysis framework based on input–output analysis. Our framework reveals the highest-priority
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Unraveling the complexity of extended producer responsibility policy mix design, implementation, and transfer dynamics in the European Union J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Jakob T. Pruess
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging was introduced to achieve closed-loop end-of-life management and design for recyclability and is an integral part of the European Union's (EU) environmental policy mix. Despite common objectives, EPR systems differ across EU member states in design and implementation. Existing cross-country comparisons often fall short of systematizing EPR and reflecting
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Toward global and national toxicity footprints J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Alexandra Leclerc, Etienne Berthet, Konstantin Stadler, Richard Wood, Alexis Laurent
Estimating comprehensive toxicity footprints, encompassing potential impacts of toxic releases from consumption on human health and ecosystems, remains challenging due to the absence of complete emission inventories and disaggregation in global economic sectors. This study proposes an integrative approach to evaluate the global toxicity footprint by combining multiple databases, inventorying methods
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Winners of the 2022 Graedel Prizes: The Journal of Industrial Ecology Best Paper Prizes J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Chris Kennedy, Richard Wood
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Life cycle assessment of in-person, virtual, and hybrid academic conferences: New evidence and perspectives J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Antonio Cavallin Toscani, Atalay Atasu, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Andrea Vinelli
This study contributes to the debate on the environmental impacts of academic conferences by comparing the life cycle impacts of a sample of real-world in-person, virtual, and hybrid conferences with different features and organizers. Results show that virtual formats reduce impacts by two to three orders of magnitude across all impact categories (for global warming, averagely from 941.9 to 1.0 kg
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Value-based bricolage: Resource mobilization in the circular economy J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Sascha P. Klein, Verena Liszt-Rohlf, Patrick Spieth
Circular-born firms face resource constraints first, as they emphasize the use and reuse of materials as an opposite to the linear production system of taking, making, and disposing of resources, and second, due to systemic challenges like lack of scale and information on resources. Given these challenges, entrepreneurs need to find novel solutions for resource mobilization in the circular economy
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Circular economy: A new research field? J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Julian Kirchherr, Andrea Urbinati, Kris Hartley
Action to pursue the circular economy (CE) transition is burgeoning in the government and the private sector. Does this action signal that CE is a distinct field of research with a unique disciplinary identity? This article argues that CE has reached field status, through its own epistemic communities characterized by increasingly shared methodological perspectives and normative ideals, and through
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The environmental performance of plastic packaging waste management in Germany: Current and future key factors J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Sarah Schmidt, David Laner
Plastic is a popular packaging material, but also criticized as a symbol for the make-use-dispose economy because of its short lifespan, its dependency on fossil fuels, and its potential contribution to marine litter. To identify current and potential future key factors for the environmental performance of plastic packaging waste (PPW) management in Germany, a life cycle assessment considering five
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Transforming existing local ecosystems to circular economy ecosystems for plastics: The case of the PlastiCity ecosystem J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-27 Virginie Litaudon, Yiran Chen
This paper discusses the transition toward a circular economy ecosystem (CEE) for plastics by assessing and mapping existing ecosystems and coordinating efforts among ecosystem actors. The PlastiCity ecosystem is used as a case study. The study employs ecosystem analysis and mapping to identify the new activities and actors needed to transition toward a CEE. These include local and eco-friendly transportation
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Drivers of urban metabolism: Toward a framework for urban transformations J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-27 Anastasia Papangelou, Jean-Baptiste Bahers, Lynda Aissani
The environmental and social crises in cities call for radical future visions that can incite transformative change. Yet, urban metabolism research typically adopts an explanatory, retrospective approach to the drivers of urban flows and stocks, resulting in conservative, business-as-usual future outlooks. In this study, we present the results of a narrative literature review on drivers and futures
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Recycling plastics from e-waste: Implications for effective eco-design J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Ceri Fenwick, Kieren Mayers, Jacquetta Lee, Richard Murphy
This paper presents five case studies on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling to provide a coherent overview on the likely impact of eco-design measures on recycling of plastics used in energy-related products within the EU. Whilst some eco-design measures, such as improving disassembly of plastic parts, may generally benefit recycling operations, other measures were found to
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Environmental footprinting of hospitals: Organizational life cycle assessment of a Canadian hospital J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Alexander Cimprich, Steven B. Young
Healthcare is a critical and complex service sector with direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions amounting to 5%–10% of the national total in developed economies like Canada and the United States. Along with a growing, albeit sporadic, set of life cycle assessment (LCA) (and “carbon footprinting”) studies of specific medical products and procedures, there is growing interest in “environmental
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Monitoring the consumption footprint of countries to support policy-making: An assessment of data availability in Germany J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Philip Nuss, Esther Sanyé-Mengual, Serenella Sala
The European Green Deal and the German Resource Efficiency Programme both aim at decoupling resource consumption and associated environmental burdens from economic growth. Monitoring the progress of such policies requires robust estimates of environmental pressures and impacts, both from a domestic and a footprint perspective. Building on the life cycle assessment-based consumption footprint (CoF)
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Economic and environmental assessment of automotive plastic waste end-of-life options: Energy recovery versus chemical recycling J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Christoph Stallkamp, Malte Hennig, Rebekka Volk, Frank Richter, Britta Bergfeldt, Salar Tavakkol, Frank Schultmann, Dieter Stapf
Most automotive plastic waste (APW) is landfilled or used in energy recovery as it is unsuitable for high-quality product mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling via pyrolysis offers a pathway toward closing the material loop by handling this heterogeneous waste and providing feedstock for producing virgin plastics. This study compares chemical recycling and energy recovery scenarios for APW regarding
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BEVSIM: Battery electric vehicle sustainability impact assessment model J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-10 Rajesh Mehta, Milad Golkaram, Jack T. W. E. Vogels, Tom Ligthart, Eugene Someren, Spela Ferjan, Jelmer Lennartz
To achieve climate neutrality ambitions, greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector need to be reduced by at least 90% by 2050. To support industry and policy makers on mitigating actions on climate goals it is important to holistically compare and reduce life cycle environmental impacts of road passenger vehicles. A web-based sustainability assessment tool named battery electric vehicle sustainability
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Quantifying a virtual water metabolic network of the Metropolitan District of Quito, Ecuador using ecological network methods J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Francisco Orlando Rosales, Brian D. Fath, Grace Yolanda Llerena
Current human population is mostly located in urban areas making cities the center of attention in terms of achieving sustainability goals. Evidence shows that ecosystems have evolved over time toward a balanced configuration between resource efficiency and functional redundancy. For this reason, they are exemplary models to follow in terms of sustainability. Here, we apply similar ecological network-based
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Data implementation matters: Effect of software choice and LCI database evolution on a comparative LCA study of permanent magnets J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Brenda Miranda Xicotencatl, René Kleijn, Sander van Nielen, Franco Donati, Benjamin Sprecher, Arnold Tukker
Life cycle assessment (LCA) databases and software evolve. We analyzed to which extent software and evolving life cycle inventory databases affect the comparison of technology alternatives, using a comparative LCA on permanent magnets as a case study, with two selected software tools: CMLCA and Brightway LCA. We migrated the system models from the CMLCA to Brightway LCA software and alternated between
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Agent-based modeling and simulation for the circular economy: Lessons learned and path forward J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Julien Walzberg, Jean-Marc Frayret, Annika L. Eberle, Alberta Carpenter, Garvin Heath
Circular economy aims at decoupling human activities from resource use and creating wealth. However, many have questioned the link between increased circularity and sustainability, resulting in several methodological approaches being developed to answer that question. This article analyzes and discusses the insights gained from applying agent-based modeling and simulation to study the techno-economic
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Are future recycling benefits misleading? Prospective life cycle assessment of lithium-ion batteries J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Joris Šimaitis, Stephen Allen, Christopher Vagg
Life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies the whole-life environmental impacts of products and is essential for helping policymakers and manufacturers transition toward sustainable practices. However, typical LCA estimates future recycling benefits as if it happens today. For long-lived products such as lithium-ion batteries, this may be misleading since there is a considerable time gap between production
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Erratum to: Ita-Nagy, D., Vázquez-Rowe, I., & Kahhat, R. (2022). Developing a methodology to quantify mismanaged plastic waste entering the ocean in coastal countries. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 26(6), 21082122. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13349. J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-16
In this article, equation 1 was incorrectly formatted on page 2115. The correct equation is shown below. p W t 0 = ∑ Q m M S W p i j ∗ 1 − f s r i ∗ f c l i , if 0 < x − < 0.1 km f c i i , if x − > 0.1 km in an inter − basin f c w i ∗ f r s j ∗ ∏ c a z = 0 f c a , otherwise $$\begin{equation}pWt0 = \sum {{Q_{mMSW{p_{ij}}}}*\left( {1 - {f_{s{r_i}}}} \right)*\left\{ { \def\eqcellsep{&}\begin{array}{@{}*{3}{l}@{}}
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Avoiding investment in fossil fuel assets J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Christopher A. Kennedy, Martin Sers, Michael I. Westphal
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires a transformation of capital assets in the economy, especially those for energy supply. This paper explores the hypothesis that economically efficient decarbonization occurs when the demand for fossil fuels declines at the same rate as their capital assets depreciate. In theory this means that new investments in fossil fuel assets are avoided, but without incurring
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Biophysical economic interpretation of the Great Depression: A critical period of an energy transition J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Christopher A. Kennedy
The objective of this paper is to explain the cause and proceedings of the 1930s Great Depression from a biophysical economic perspective. The Depression was a painful episode in the socio-technological transition from a coal/railroad regime to one based on hydrocarbons, motor vehicles, and electricity. The beginning—the Great Crash of October 1929—corresponded with drastic cuts in oil prices and announcement
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The Bahamas at risk: Material stocks, sea-level rise, and the implications for development J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Francisco Martin del Campo, Simron Jit Singh, Tomer Fishman, Adelle Thomas, Michael Drescher
Recent research suggests that over 75% of resources extracted globally now go toward creating, maintaining, or operating material stocks (MS) to provide societal services like housing, transport, education, and health. However, the integrity of current and future built environments, and the capacity of the system to continue providing services, are threatened by extreme events and sea-level rise (SLR)
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Characterizing IT asset disposition flows for the circular economy: A case study on export for reuse from Ireland J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Kathleen McMahon, Chidinma Uchendu, Colin Fitzpatrick
Understanding flows of resource-rich electrical and electronic equipment throughout its life cycle is increasingly important in the development of global circular economies, reflected by heavy legislative focuses on waste prevention and resource use efficiency. This research facilitates broader material flow analysis by characterizing flows of professional IT equipment within the Republic of Ireland
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Reflecting the importance of human needs fulfilment in absolute sustainability assessments: Development of a sharing principle J. Ind. Ecol. (IF 5.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-23 Mia Heide, Michael Z. Hauschild, Morten Ryberg
Absolute environmental sustainability assessments (AESAs) evaluate whether the environmental impact of a product system is within its share of a safe operating space as determined by biophysical sustainability limits such as the planetary boundaries (PBs). The choice of sharing principle has significant influence on the result of an AESA, and any studies call for further research on how to share the