Use of Life Cycle Assessment methodology in the analysis of Ecological Footprint Assessment results to evaluate the environmental performance of universities

Abstract

The assessment of the environmental performance of an organization is an essential part of the decision-making process of an Environmental Management System. Having robust indicators enables a reliable assessment. The Ecological Footprint Assessment is used in different types of organizations, including universities. Its ability to clearly communicate over-consumption by using a land-base unit is an advantage when involving the university community in achieving better environmental performance. However, its lack of standardization makes it difficult to use as an indicator. It is believed that Life Cycle Assessment offers a framework with which to standardize the Ecological Footprint Assessment. In this paper, an Ecological Footprint Assessment considering Life Cycle Assessment methodology is developed as a case study for Universitat Politècnica de València. Findings regarding the critical decisions of the methodology are compared with 23 Ecological Footprint Assessments of universities using a Life Cycle Assessment framework. Only 26% of the studies analyzed reference the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Critical decisions such as defining a Functional Unit were relevant but not standardized, while the definition of the product system was the most standardized and homogeneous decision. The difficulty of gathering information when Environmental Management Systems are not available makes the Ecological Footprint Assessment a weak indicator. Nevertheless, results show that Life Cycle Assessment can guide an Ecological Footprint Assessment methodology where comparability and reliability is possible.

Organizational water footprint: a methodological guidance

“…Methodological requirements for an ISOconform life cycle assessment of organizations is available (ISO 2014b) and has been specified in both EU and UN context by dedicated guidance documents (European Commission 2012;UNEP 2015;Martínez-Blanco et al 2019). The organizational level has been explored also in case studies for the packaging sector (Manzardo et al 2016(Manzardo et al , 2018b, the construction sector (Neppach et al 2017), the university sector (Lo-Iacono-Ferreira et al 2016), the gastronomy sector (Jungbluth et al 2016), a special purpose entity (Manzardo et al 2018a), and 12 diverse organizations that road-tested the Guidance on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment ( UN Environment 2017;de Camargo et al 2019). An even further upscaling of the LCA method has been performed by territorial LCA, intended for informing land planning decisions (Loiseau et al 2013(Loiseau et al , 2014(Loiseau et al , 2018Mazzi et al 2017).…”

Balancing Rural Household Livelihood and Regional Ecological Footprint in Water Source Areas of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project

“…Unfortunately, EF, itself, has no ability in assessing these specific eco-environmental impacts, such as those arising from high-intensity use of natural resources. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been highlighted as a means for improving EF methods to calculate impacts accounted for within the EF [46,[81][82][83]. Using the LCA tool, the quantified impacts for the overall life cycle of regional resource consumption could be derived for policy design on balancing livelihood sustainability and eco-environmental security.…”

Environmental Impacts of the Beef Production Chain in the Northeast of Portugal Using Life Cycle Assessment

“…LCA is a relatively recent, fast-growing method and has become a standard and cutting-edge tool for investigating the environmental performance of a wide range of human processes [16]. Due to its strict definition, LCA is one of the most accepted tools in the study and measurement of the environmental impacts associated with products and services [17].…”