Life Cycle Thinking, Sustainability and Circular Economy: Practical Applications and Future Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

The United Nations have led the way towards a more sustainable future by setting their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Moreover, the EU has indicated the transition to Circular Economy (CE) amongst its priorities, thus showing a clear view towards sustainability. This concept, the roots of which can be found in the principles of Industrial Ecology, aims at favouring the maintenance of the value of products as well as of materials and resources within the economy as long as possible along with the minimisation of waste.

Furthermore, the concept of life cycle thinking (LCT), which takes into consideration the entire life cycle of a good or a service, aims at promoting all pillars of sustainability via three methodologies: life cycle assessment (LCA) for the environmental pillar, life cycle costing (LCC) for the economic one and Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) for the social one. LCA and LCC are standardised methodologies (ISO 14040:2016 and ISO 14044:2016 for LCA; ISO 15663-1:2001, ISO 15663-2:2001 and ISO 15663-3:2001 for LCC), whilst S-LCA is still emerging, although already tackled by the 2009 UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of products (the drafting of the new version of the Guidelines is in progress).

With the need to promote sustainability becoming ever more important and current in a milestone year such as 2020, many challenges may arise around how to find synergies among CE, LCT and sustainable development. This Special Issue aims at putting together the knowledge obtained so far on these issues by including case studies and literature reviews within various key economic sectors as well as at taking a glimpse of the future by identifying the key aspects and methodological challenges that such synergies may entail.

Prof. Ioannis Arzoumanidis
Prof. Alberto Simboli
Guest Editors

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