Weighting with Life Cycle Assessment and Cradle to Cradle: A Methodology for Global Sustainability Design

Abstract

Sustainable product design uses methodologies focused on eco-effectiveness and eco-efficiency for the proposal of innovative technological solutions and for the control of environmental impacts during the product life cycle. One of the main drawbacks of such techniques is their qualitative nature, associated with a decision-making process that is sometimes arbitrary, or with unverifiable data; this means that several complementary tools are currently being used to reduce the error in the results obtained. This situation makes the unification of procedures necessary. In this context, this research develops a methodology for the sustainable design of industrial products that integrates life cycle assessment (in its environmental, economic and social application) and cradle-to-cradle techniques. For this purpose, a new assessment process is proposed, based on damage, developing LCA+C2C endpoint indicators. The methodology is subsequently verified in a case study of products for sustainable mobility (city trike electric). The results show that an integrated LCA+C2C assessment can help to propose more balanced sustainable strategies and would be a suitable method to measure tradeoffs between economic, social and environmental results, for practical purposes and future redesigns. The unified method provides a procedure to design a solution with a trade-off between eco-efficient and eco-effective criteria; it also simplifies the design phases, facilitates the interpretation of the results and provides a quantitative scope to the cradle-to-cradle framework.

Including Nature-Based Success Measurement Criteria in the Life Cycle Assessment

“…the literature, which copes with the two limitations. For instance, studies focusing efforts on combining these two limitations are: the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) [13], life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) [14], and an LCA + C2C but accounts for the three pillars of sustainability [15]. Other variants are economic life-cycle costing [3], the social LCA (SLCA) [16], dynamic LCA [17], and positive sustainability performance (PSP) [13].…”

“…Recent studies found in the literature present potential to materialize such a newparadigm-based tool based on biomimetics [46], on biomimicry [40], and on cradleto-cradle (C2C, also known as regenerative design approach) [15]. These studies followed the ten biomimicry principles [45].…”

“…Such a tool for impact assessment of biomimetic design still follows the "reduced unsustainability" paradigm due to the questions and metrics employed [46]. Furthermore, Peralta et al [15], in 2021, proposed an upgrade to the cradle-tocradle approach (a form of biomimicry) for sustainable designs. Since for the cradleto-cradle approach there are not yet reported normative and guidelines, considering only environmental and social aspects qualitatively without any available tool, the proposed upgrade intends to assess both positive and negative impacts by dividing the assessment into three levels, that is, evaluating the LCI at micro, meso, and macro levels.…”

“…The latter indicates that this proposed upgrade (or methodology) finalizes with assessing the product's progress, which coincides with the "reduction of unsustainability" paradigm. Despite this, this proposed methodology advances the field by providing a quantitative tool for complementing the cradle-to-cradle approach [15].…”

“…However, encountered impact assessment tools still struggle assess the achievement of sustainability of the product but assure advancement in the LCIA current indicators. Although the other two tools [15,46] provide a quantitative framework for the LCIA, the Biocircular model [40] does not solely focus on providing a way of measuring sustainability but rather on working as a complement to the problem analyzed. This potential could be convenient to how LCIA is performed and interpreted in years to come, but the approach is in its early stages.…”