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Life Cycle Assessment and Water Footprint Assessment in Support of Achieving the SDGs

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2023) | Viewed by 9891

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Sustainable Food Production, Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
Interests: water footprint; sustainability; life cycle assessment; environmental impacts

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Co-Guest Editor
Department of Sustainable Food Production, Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
Interests: water footprint; sustainability; life cycle assessment; environmental impacts

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There is increasing global concern related to water scarcity issues; in fact, global freshwater use has been listed as one of the nine planetary boundaries. Earth’s freshwater resources have been identified as dangerously subjected to increasing pressure in the form of consumptive water use and pollution. Water is crucial for food production, sanitation and hygiene; therefore, the sustainable use of this resource is essential. Thus, a deep understanding of the impacts on water use enhances the exploration of more suitable avenues for sustainable development.

Hoekstra and Hung, starting from the original idea of virtual water introduced by Tony Allan in the early 1990s, have developed a water footprint concept relatively recently, in 2002. In 2011, the Water Footprint Network released a methodology based on a volumetric approach. In recent years, the LCA community has also fostered a methodological development to address the water impact, in which the water footprint is defined as “metric(s) that quantifies the potential environmental impacts related to water”.

Actually, the scientific community is debating the two aforementioned indicators which are often indicated with the same name of the water footprint to describe a different water accounting approach. Given the urgent call for action according to United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), new policy proposals on water management and possible solutions for the SDGs implementation able  to promote sustainable water use, are a special area of interest.

This Special Issue intends to cover the state-of-the-art and recent progress in the application of the different water indicator methodologies in the sustainability assessment of products and services. Qualitative and quantitative studies addressing the water impacts of human activities will be considered for publication, including field experiments, case studies, theoretical, and literature review studies. Systems thinking and holistic approaches combining the environmental, economic, and social dimension of sustainability are encouraged, e.g., providing evidence from life cycle sustainability assessment.

This Special Issue is in memory of Tony Allan. He has inspired the scientific community to further find a fair sustainable solution for water usage. He shan’t be forgotten!

Dr. Lucrezia Lamastra
Dr. Diego Voccia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

Keywords

  • water footprint
  • water impact
  • water stress
  • environmental indicators
  • SDGs
  • life cycle assessment
  • life cycle thinking
  • agricultural and food system sustainability
  • sustainable production and consumption
  • environmental impacts
  • sustainable transitions

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1353 KiB  
Article
Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Two Different Packaging Systems for Extra-Virgin Olive Oil: Glass Bottle vs. 100% Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Bottle
by Carmen Ferrara and Giovanni De Feo
Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3665; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043665 - 16 Feb 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5787
Abstract
Using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, this study assesses the environmental sustainability of two packaging alternatives for extra virgin olive oil: the glass bottle and the PET bottle produced with 100% of recycled PET granulate. Six scenarios were compared varying on the type [...] Read more.
Using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, this study assesses the environmental sustainability of two packaging alternatives for extra virgin olive oil: the glass bottle and the PET bottle produced with 100% of recycled PET granulate. Six scenarios were compared varying on the type of packaging system and the distribution phase (in terms of distribution country and logistics). The life cycle impacts of the scenarios were estimated with the ReCiPe 2018 H evaluation method, using both the midpoint and endpoint approaches. The findings highlighted the higher environmental sustainability of the recycled PET system compared to the glass system for all the impact categories considered, but especially in terms of the global warming potential, particulate formation, terrestrial acidification, and fossil fuel scarcity for which life cycle impacts of the R-PET were lower than 40% compared to those of the glass system. In terms of global warming, the glass system was responsible for 790–1137 kg CO2 eq. (in function of the destination country considered); while the R-PET system, in the same conditions, showed impacts of 459–634 kg CO2 eq. This is mainly due to the high weight of the glass bottle that affected the impacts of both the production and distribution phases. The mode of transport affected the impacts of the distribution phases highlighting how ship transport was more sustainable than truck transport, even when considering greater distribution distances. The LCA results can help consumers make more informed choices with a view to sustainability, as well as disprove the prejudices that consumers often have towards glass bottle packaging alternatives. Full article
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13 pages, 2783 KiB  
Article
The Anthropic Pressure on the Grey Water Footprint: The Case of the Vulnerable Areas of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Italy
by Diego Voccia, Giacomo Mortella, Federico Ferrari, Maria Chiara Fontanella, Marco Trevisan and Lucrezia Lamastra
Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16353; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416353 - 7 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3231
Abstract
Nitrogen (N) is an important component of plant development, yet its application and contamination are a global issue. Diffuse source pollution and its effects on ecosystem health are notoriously difficult to track and control. This paper answers the Sustainable development Goal 6 goal [...] Read more.
Nitrogen (N) is an important component of plant development, yet its application and contamination are a global issue. Diffuse source pollution and its effects on ecosystem health are notoriously difficult to track and control. This paper answers the Sustainable development Goal 6 goal focused on reducing water pollution by improving the understanding of nitrate emissions to groundwater and their resulting water pollution level in the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. The Grey water footprint (GWF) and water pollution level (WPL) were used as indicators and geospatial maps were constructed in order to determine if N levels exceeded groundwater quality demand from 2014 to 2020. Moreover, a selection of specific agricultural sites in the Piacenza district has been performed to better understand the potential anthropogenic nitrate pollution due to the agricultural sector. In the selected sites, the predicted nitrate pollution due to agricultural practice has been compared with the nitrate concentration measured in samples collected across the period 2015–2018. The regional results show that approximately 70% of the analysed sites resulted in a total N load exceeding the estimated agricultural load to groundwater. The analysis conducted in three selected wells in the Piacenza district shows the sporadic exceedances of the legal limit and demonstrates the presence of anthropogenic pressures of various natures insisting on the surrounding area and confirms a potential non-agricultural point or diffuse pollution source. Full article
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