Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment in the Circular Economy: Challenges and Opportunities

Dear Colleagues,

In the present, humankind is called upon to face global challenges that threaten the well-being of future generations. Climate change, pollution and resource scarcity are driving the necessity of shifting towards more sustainable and circular practices. However, what appears to be sustainable is not always so, and many claims of “greeness” have proven to be misleading.

Within this context, measuring environmental sustainability becomes a priority and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely acknowledged methodology suited for this purpose. According to ISO standards 14040-44 (2006), LCA is a powerful tool for quantifying the environmental impacts associated with a product, process or service. Nevertheless, some limitations have emerged when applying LCA to circular patterns, such as the challenge of dealing with the complexity of circular models, which typically feature numerous feedback loops and shifting interactions among their various elements. The integration of LCA with other approaches may help to address limitations and improve the understanding of complex systems.

This Topic welcomes original research, review, opinion and perspective articles that broadly address the following topics:

• Sustainability assessment methodologies, including LCA, social LCA and Life Cycle Costing as well as energy, exergy and emergy analysis, etc., and their application to circular systems;
• Integration of LCA with other analytical approaches for more comprehensive sustainability assessments;
• Methodological innovations and novel approaches for measuring the circularity of production and consumption systems.

Dr. Gabriella Fiorentino
Dr. Remo Santagata
Topic Editors