Renewable Energy and Carbon Management in the Cradle‐to‐Cradle Certification: Limitations and Opportunities

Abstract

Summary 11As part of the Cradle to Cradle ® (C2C) certification program, the C2C certification criterion 12 "Renewable Energy and Carbon Management" (RE&CM) focuses on use of electricity from RE 13 and direct greenhouse gas offsets in the manufacturing stage and to a limited extent on the cradle to 14 gate only at the highest level of certification. The aim of this study is to provide decision-makers 15 with a quantified overview of possible limitations of that C2C certification requirement and 16 potential gains by introducing a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective to the scheme. 17Scenario analysis was used to perform an LCA of an aluminum can system representing different 18 levels of the C2C certification criterion RE&CM, considering different strategies to achieve 100% 19RE in the manufacturing stage. The adoption of a broader life cycle RE perspective was considered 20 through the implementation of electricity from renewable sources from cradle to grave. Our results 21show that compliance with the current RE&CM certification framework offers limited benefits, i.e. 22significant reduction for climate change but negligible reductions for other environmental impacts, 23 e.g. particulate matter and acidification. However, increasing the share of RE in the primary 24 aluminum production from a full life cycle perspective can greatly increase the environmental 25 benefits brought up by the C2C certification, not only for climate change, but for the broader range 26 of impact categories. In our striving towards environmental sustainability, which often cannot be 27 approximated by climate change impacts alone, we therefore recommend decision-makers in 28 industries to combine the C2C certification with LCA when they define strategies for the selection 29 of renewable energy and raw materials suppliers. With the current political and business emphasis on circular economy, defined as a restorative or 35 regenerative industrial system by intention and design (EMF 2013; EC 2015), the Cradle-to-Cradle ® 36(C2C) design framework has gained an increasing visibility in industry (Toxopeus et al. 2015). C2C 37 is a design framework oriented towards product quality and innovation, aiming to maximize the 38 overall benefits of products to ecological and economical systems by designing "eco-effective" 39 solutions. C2C relies on three key principles: "waste equal food", "use current solar income" and 71We build on the results of an existing LCA of aluminum beverage cans (termed "AlC system" in respectively. In the current study, we therefore consider different can systems including either

A literature review on circular economy adoption in the manufacturing sector

“…Cleaner production (Bhandari et al, 2019); (Jia et al, 2019); (Vimal et al, 2019); (Mendoza et al, 2019); (Kalmykova et al, 2018); (Niero et al, 2018); (Fisher et al, 2018); (Ridaura et al, 2018); (Zhong and Pearce, 2018a); (Minunno et al, 2018); (Franciosi et al, 2017); (Despeisse et al, 2017); (Ingarao, 2017); (Trentesaux and Giret, 2015); (Paredes-Sánchez et al, 2018).…”

Design for Sustainability

“…Bach, Minkov and Finkbeiner (2018) found that good environmental performance of CTC certified products is not assured due to the limited assessment scope, which does not take into account all product life-cycle phases and disregards some environmental impacts. Others have also argued that CTC design might shift the focus of design decisions from the entire life cycle of the product to the minimisation or eliminatation of toxic materials; therefore, it might result in the impacts of energy consumption being overlooked (Bakker et al, 2010;Llorach-Massana, Farreny, & Oliver-Solà, 2015;Niero et al, 2018). This is a particularly significant issue for products which consume energy during the use phase (Llorach-Massana et al, 2015).…”

“…It is important to acknowledge the complementariness of eco-efficiency (measured by LCAs) and eco-effectiveness rather than treating them as mutually exclusive and contrasting. To address this, several studies have argued for the complementary use of CTC and LCA in design practice (see, e.g., Bjørn & Hauschild, 2013;Toxopeus, de Koeijer, & Meij, 2015;Niero et al, 2018). Nevertheless, there have so far been no significant contributions on this front.…”

Combining Eco‐Efficiency and Eco‐Effectiveness for Continuous Loop Beverage Packaging Systems: Lessons from the Carlsberg Circular Community

“…We considered the introduction of a broader RE perspective covering the life cycle, and our results showed that increasing the share of RE in the primary aluminum production from a full life cycle perspective can greatly increase the environmental benefits brought up by the C2C certification not only for climate change, but for the broader range of impact categories (Niero et al. ).…”