Assessing Sustainability by a Life Cycle Approach

Dear Colleagues,

Life cycle assessment plays a very important role in the contemporary assessment of the sustainability and circularity of products, services, and organizations. The life cycle approach is also a crucial issue in the Green New Deal and ecological transition. The life cycle methodology is well-known by scientists and is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization in order to obtain numerous kinds of environmental footprints; at the same time, a large number of voluntary certification systems both for processes and products are based on life cycle assessments. A life cycle perspective is also recommended by the European Commission in the context of the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products” in order to measure the environmental performance of products to obtaining the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF).

Starting from these premises, this Special Issue aims to collect scientific and practice experiences of sustainability assessment carried out with a life cycle approach and by considering not only environmental analysis, but economic and social aspects as well.

By focusing on these three aspects of sustainability, this Special Issue could help to point out the important issue of sustainability assessment and help practitioners, experts, and researchers to deal with critical aspects of life cycle assessment.

Ultimately, this Special Issue represents a further enrichment of scientific literature and experience around the application of life cycle methodology. Its implications could be very useful in stimulating debate about the right way towards a real Green New Deal.

Dr. Carlo Russo
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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-blind 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.

• sustainability
• life cycle sustainability assessment
• environmental footprint
• life cycle thinking
• environmental performance
• circular economy