Chemical footprint: A methodological framework for bridging life cycle assessment and planetary boundaries for chemical pollution

Abstract

The development and use of footprint methodologies for environmental assessment are increasingly important for both the scientific and political communities. Starting from the ecological footprint, developed at the beginning of the 1990s, several other footprints were defined, e.g., carbon and water footprint. These footprints-even though based on a different meaning of "footprint"-integrate life cycle thinking, and focus on some challenging environmental impacts including resource consumption, CO2 emission leading to climate change, and water consumption. However, they usually neglect relevant sources of impacts, as those related to the production and use of chemicals. This article presents and discusses the need and relevance of developing a methodology for assessing the chemical footprint, coupling a life cycle-based approach with methodologies developed in other contexts, such as ERA and sustainability science. Furthermore, different concepts underpin existing footprint and this could be the case also of chemical footprint. At least 2 different approaches and steps to chemical footprint could be envisaged, applicable at the micro- as well as at the meso- and macroscale. The first step (step 1) is related to the account of chemicals use and emissions along the life cycle of a product, sector, or entire economy, to assess potential impacts on ecosystems and human health. The second step (step 2) aims at assessing to which extent actual emission of chemicals harm the ecosystems above their capability to recover (carrying capacity of the system). The latter step might contribute to the wide discussion on planetary boundaries for chemical pollution: the thresholds that should not be surpassed to guarantee a sustainable use of chemicals from an environmental safety perspective. The definition of what the planetary boundaries for chemical pollution are and how the boundaries should be identified is an on-going scientific challenge for ecotoxicology and ecology. In this article, we present a case study at the macroscale for the European Union, in which the chemical footprint according to step 1 is calculated for the year 2005. A proposal for extending this approach toward step 2 is presented and discussed, complemented by a discussion on the challenges and the use of appropriate methodologies for assessing chemical footprints to stimulate further research and discussion on the topic.

The SOLUTIONS project: Challenges and responses for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management

“…Also, the optimal placement of technical abatement options given the (climate-variable) hydrological situation and the geospecific emissions is evaluated and rules of thumb are deduced. Two innovative concepts will be operationalized and applied to evaluate risks and abatement options: chemical footprint (Hitchcock et al, 2012;Sala and Goralczyk, 2013) and planetary boundaries (Rockström et al, 2009) and their interfaces (Posthuma et al, subm. ; Zijp et al, subm.…”

Three methods for strategic product toxicity assessment—the case of the cotton T-shirt

“…In a recent article on LCA on textiles, Terinte et al (2014) excluded toxicity impacts and stated that both inventory data and characterisation factors (CF) were missing for textile chemicals, in particular for detergents and dyestuffs. It is common in LCA studies to neglect the production and use of chemicals according to Sala and Goralczyk (Sala and Goralczyk 2013) although their relevance is generally regarded as high Čuček et al 2012;Hitchcock et al 2012;Laurent et al 2012). Three commonly used life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods including USEtox were recently shown to generate inconsistent results for toxicity impacts (Owsianiak et al 2014).…”

“…This life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is called Btoxic footprint^in this article, which can be considered as a subset of the Bchemical footprint^concept discussed previously in literature (Čuček et al 2012;Hitchcock et al 2012;Sala and Goralczyk 2013). The main advantage of calculating toxic footprints compared to scoring the management procedures is that it is the actual environmental performance that is quantitatively measured.…”

The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains

“…The links to biosphere integrity and water use (scarcity) are particularly important, considering the contribution of chemicals to affecting biosphere integrity, and considering the role of water volume and dilution in determining chemical risks: water scarcity exacerbates exposure and thus risk. In defining a boundary, research should also focus on the vulnerability of exposed ecosystems [85,107] incorporating the concept of Ecosystem Vulnerability Distributions [108], whereby it matters whether the mixture affects the food web generically, or specifically primarily via sensitive functional groups [109].…”