Accounting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Materials at the Urban Scale-Relating Existing Process Life Cycle Assessment Studies to Urban Material and Waste Composition

Abstract

Although many cities are engaged in efforts to calculate and reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, most are accounting for "scope one" emissions i.e., GHGs produced within urban boundaries (for example, following the protocol of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). Cities should also account for the emissions associated with goods, services and materials consumed within their boundaries, "scope three" emissions. The emissions related to urban consumption patterns and choices greatly influence overall emissions that can be associated with an urban area. However, data constraints and GHG accounting complexity present challenges. In this paper we propose one approach that cities can take to measure the GHG emissions of their material consumption: the solid waste life cycle assessment (LCA) based approach. We used this approach to identify a set of materials commonly consumed within cities, and reviewed published life cycle assessment data to determine the GHG emissions associated with production of each. Our review reveals that among fourteen commonly consumed materials, textiles and aluminum are associated with the highest GHG emissions per tonne of production. Paper and plastics have relatively lower production emissions, but a potentially higher impact on overall emissions owing to their large proportions, by weight, in the consumption stream.

The environmental price of fast fashion

“…Carbon footprint. Textiles, alongside aluminium, generate the most greenhouse gases per unit of material 45 . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims that the textile industry causes 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions 1 , but the scope and method of this estimate are unclear.…”

Accounting for the Ecological Footprint of Materials in Consumer Goods at the Urban Scale

“…Publication of more LCA studies is necessary for true comparisons. In a previously published paper [9], we presented the GHG emissions calculated for the same set of materials, using data from the same LCA sources. We believe it is important for cities to have information on both GHG emissions and ecological footprint values to determine (1) sustainable levels of urban material consumption and (2) to inform policies and programs that promote rapid change toward those levels.…”

“…Many local governments are engaging in efforts to monitor and reduce these impacts, for example, using the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability GHG Emissions Analysis Protocol [8] to measure their contributions to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While indeed such measurement is critical [9], we suggest that a comprehensive account of urban demands on global renewable resources and ecosystems is equally warranted. Urban ecological footprint analysis (EFA) aims to account for the full scope of energy and materials appropriated by a city's residents, businesses and operations; its biophysical inputs (i.e., various types of biologically productive land); and the carbon dioxide emissions produced as wastes.…”

Performance of Polymer Cementitious Coatings for High-Voltage Electrical Infrastructure

“…Cement is associated with about 1000 kg CO 2 eq./t embodied carbon and 5500 MJ/t embodied energy, which is the main cause of the environmental load of concrete [84,85]. Table 5 shows that the styrene-acrylic copolymer had high values of embodied energy and embodied carbon (i.e., 37,400 MJ/t and 1500 kg CO 2 eq./t, respectively) which were comparable to the plastic materials, as shown in Table 4, since SA is also formed through the polymerization of ethane [80,86]. A prototype of a 6-m long PCC tube network (shown in Figure 11) was manufactured and used as a reference for the environmental assessment in this paper.…”