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Sustainability
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Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment: Methods, Applications and Future Trends
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Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment: Methods, Applications and Future Trends

A Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 October 2026 | Viewed by 1627

Editors

Dr. Sharath K Ankathi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA
Interests: life cycle assessment; circular economy; sustainable process design; waste-to-energy technologies; environmental systems analysis
Dr. Utkarsh Shailesh Chaudhari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Interests: life cycle assessment; techno-economic analysis; process simulations; systems analysis and waste management systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable development increasingly relies on scientifically rigorous approaches to assess environmental impacts across product life cycles. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a foundational tool in evaluating sustainability metrics in industries such as energy, agriculture, waste management, and manufacturing. However, emerging challenges such as data limitations, dynamic modeling, and integration with circular economy frameworks necessitate advancement in LCA methodologies.

This Special Issue, ‘Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment: Methods, Applications and Future Trends’, aims to explore innovative LCA methods, diverse applications in industrial and policy contexts, and future trends, including digitalization and real-time environmental monitoring. Contributions may address sector-specific studies, methodological improvements, or strategic integrations like LCA in policymaking.

We invite original research articles and critical reviews spanning methodological, applied, and strategic aspects of sustainable LCA. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are encouraged to share work driving the next generation of sustainability assessments.

Suggested themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Novel methodological frameworks in LCA
  • LCA in waste valorization and circular economy
  • Life Cycle Thinking in policymaking
  • AI integrated vs non-integrated LCA
  • Digital tools for real-time or dynamic LCA assessments

We look forward to your valuable contributions.

Dr. Sharath K Ankathi
Dr. Utkarsh Shailesh Chaudhari
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable life cycle assessment
  • circular economy
  • waste-to-energy
  • environmental systems analysis
  • industrial sustainability
  • AI and digital LCA tools
  • resource optimization
  • sustainable process design
  • recovery and reprocessing of waste tailings
  • critical materials manufacturing

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 3316 KB  
Article
Dual-Carbon Flow Life Cycle Assessment of Mussel Aquaculture in Shengsi, Zhejiang: Decoding the Carbon Footprint of China’s Largest Mussel Production Base
by Zong-Pei Jiang, Yuting Li, Yiwen Pan, Chaochao Yu, Yanan Di, Hongwen Pan, Kailang Ma, Li Li, Bingxiao Bai and Jinxing Xiao
Sustainability 2026, 18(5), 2257; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18052257 - 26 Feb 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 905
Abstract
The climate impact of bivalve aquaculture remains inadequately quantified for China, the world’s dominant producer. Prevailing carbon footprint assessments often overlook the complexity of biological carbon flows and fail to capture effects that evolve across different timescales. To address these gaps, we developed [...] Read more.
The climate impact of bivalve aquaculture remains inadequately quantified for China, the world’s dominant producer. Prevailing carbon footprint assessments often overlook the complexity of biological carbon flows and fail to capture effects that evolve across different timescales. To address these gaps, we developed a novel multi-temporal dual-carbon flow life cycle assessment framework that systematically quantifies both the anthropogenic (ACF) and biological (BCF) carbon footprints and evaluates the climate impacts across different time horizons. Applied to China’s largest mussel farm, the framework reveals the system’s total carbon footprint decreases from +261.7 kg CO2-eq/t under a conventional Cradle-to-Gate perspective to +84.6 kg CO2-eq/t over a centennial scale and further to +27.9 kg CO2-eq/t over a geological timescale. With the ACF constant across all timescales (+256.2 kg CO2-eq/t), the transition in total carbon footprint is driven entirely by the BCF. The BCF changes from a minor positive contribution during farming (+5.5 kg CO2-eq/t, from enhanced sea-to-air CO2 efflux) to a major net sink at centennial (–171.6 kg CO2-eq/t ) and geological (–228.3 kg CO2-eq/t) scales, primarily due to long-term carbon sequestration from shell removal, burial, and weathering. Consequently, the net carbon footprint is not a fixed attribute but a function of temporal perspective, controlled decisively by shell-waste management. Aligning the industry with climate goals thus requires not only reducing the ACF through material and energy efficiency during the production chain but, crucially, also diverting shells from incineration to burial or weathering pathways to secure their long-term sink potential. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment: Methods, Applications and Future Trends)
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