Assessing the Availability of Terrestrial Biotic Materials in Product Systems (BIRD)

Abstract

Availability of abiotic resources has been a topic of concern in recent years, resulting in several approaches being published to determine their availability on country and product level. However, the availability of biotic materials has not been analyzed to this extent yet. Therefore, an approach to determine possible limitations to availability of terrestrial biotic materials over the entire supply chain is introduced. The approach considers 24 categories overall as well as associated category indicators for the five dimensions: physical, socio-economic, abiotic, social and environmental constraints. This ensures a comprehensive availability assessment of bio-based product systems. The approach is applied to a case study comparing biodiesel produced from rapeseed and soy beans. The study shows that the determination of indicator values is feasible for most categories and their interpretation leads to meaningful conclusions. Thus, the approach leads to a more comprehensive assessment of availability aspects and supports better informed decision making in industry and policy.

Assessing the Ability of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program to Reliably Determine the Environmental Performance of Products

“…When compared with, e.g., fossil-based materials, bio-plastics perform better with regard to some impact categories such as climate change, acidification and resource depletion. However, the consideration of, e.g., land use aspects including soil degradation, is crucial when assessing bio-based materials [79][80][81]. However, it is not considered in C2CP.…”

Environmental Indicators for the Evaluation of Wood Products in Consideration of Site-Dependent Aspects: A Review and Integrated Approach

“…In recent studies from Bach et al (2017) [196] and Crenna et al (2017) [18], both devoted to the conceptual development of LCA, indicator-based frameworks are presented that allow the integration of diverse biotic resources into LCA. In respecting cause-and-effect relationships, different origins of biotic resources (natural and man-made resources), and constraints for the availability of biotic resources, such conceptual developments can be promising for the future evaluation of wood products.…”

Bio-Based Production Systems: Why Environmental Assessment Needs to Include Supporting Systems

“…Among existing efforts to overcome this gap, Langlois et al presented alternative methods for LCIA of biotic resource depletion in fisheries where the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) concept was incorporated into the impact assessment methodology, together with ecological aspects such as estimations of regeneration capacity [61]. Similar attempts have been made for terrestrial biotic resources [50,71], and Crenna et al [43] presented an innovative approach where the renewal rate was calculated for a number of natural biotic resources (ranging from terrestrial to aquatic, and from mammals to algae), measured in years required for reproducing one kilogram of the resource after extraction. In general, however, a higher degree of case specificity (ecological features, local conditions, socio-economic structures, etc.)…”