Investigating the integration between life cycle thinking, green chemistry principles and sustainability policies

Abstract

Green chemistry and life cycle assessment are two methodologies used in environmental studies, both theoretically and practically. The purpose of this analysis was to assess whether and how green chemistry principles could be integrated into the life cycle assessment methodology and to local and international industrial policies to achieve sustainability goals at the territorial level. First, some contributions that life-cycle thinking gives to green chemistry and vice versa are proposed, based on existing research. Data are provided using tables to summarise contents and graphs to outline interconnections, also considering the four steps of life cycle assessment, showing some available references of previous studies. Secondly, some possible points of integration between the 12 principles of green chemistry and environmental policies are listed. For each principle of green chemistry, a possible integration with international and local strategies is proposed. A list of references that might be useful to investigate possible patterns of study for territorial and industrial uses, is provided too. The results show that life cycle thinking and green chemistry can be integrated into theoretical and practical case studies, since many interconnections exist. These interconnections permit one to use the best characteristics of each method to improve the reliability of the other method and, finally, to solve environmental, industrial, and engineering problems with a more comprehensive approach. In addition, green chemistry principles can be easily associated with main environmental policies at the international, national, regional, and local levels. This allows one to use results, knowledge, and expertise of the green chemistry framework and apply them to industries, territories, and communities. The similarities highlighted in this analysis need further investigation in future studies since they can help decision making process in sustainability policies.

Assessment of Chemical Products and Processes: Green Metrics and Life Cycle Assessment – A Comparison

“…Furthermore, the cleaning of batch devices is not included even though it should be considered due to its considerably high contribution to the mass balance of the process. Additionally, educts, waste, and purification must be considered, these being factors which often influence the performance in the entire life cycle [27]. Tieves et al.…”

“…In the context of green chemistry, the role of LCA as an alternative assessment approach to GM is discussed controversially in scientific literature. On the one hand, the life cycle perspective of LCA is seen as a benefit and important aspect of green chemistry evaluations [17, 20, 25–30]. On the other hand, LCA is considered to be too complex for application in early development phases, as already outlined [19, 20, 31].…”

Assessing environmental sustainability of projects with different tools. A life cycle perspective.

“…In the first step of this analysis, a summary of the results of the conducted studies with different tools is provided: carbon footprint (Camana et al, 2021a), design for disassembly (Toniolo et al, 2021), environmental product declaration (Camana et al, 2022a), Italian targets (Camana et al 2021b), sustainable development goals (Camana et al, 2020), green chemistry principles (Camana et al, 2022b), waste hierarchy criteria (Camana et al, 2021c), circular economy indicators (Camana et al, 2021d). Results both from environmental assessment tool -or target or indicator -and LCT tool are briefly shown in Figure 3.…”

برنامج إثرائي قائم على التكامل بين مختبر الكيمياء الخضراء ومنهجية تقييم دورة الحياة (Lca) لتنمية الكفاءة الذاتية البيئية والجدل العلمي لدى طالبات الكلية التطبيقية بالسعودية

“…) ‫الكيمياء‬ ‫مختبر‬ ‫أنشطة‬ ‫بدعم‬ ‫اهتمت‬ ‫دراسات‬ ‫وهناك‬ ‫د‬ ‫مثل‬ ‫الخضراء‬ ‫ر‬ ‫من‬ ‫كل‬ ‫اسات‬ (Aubrecht et al, 2015;Rand et al, 2016;Mufidah et al, 2019;Armstrong et al, 2019) ‫رييز‬ ‫ويرى‬ (Reyes et al, (Herrchen & Klein, 2000;Sawitri et al, 2015;Eck, 2022;Camana et al, 2022;Reyes et al, 2022…”