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Lecture

Life Cycle Assessment: Allocation and Recycling

In course

ENV-370: Environmental system analysis and assessment

Les enjeux environnementaux doivent être abordés de façon systémique. L'Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV) et l'Analyse de Flux de Matière (AFM) sont des méthodes permettant d'évaluer de façon globale les performances environnementales des produits, des service ...

Description

This lecture covers the concepts of allocation and recycling in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It discusses how to allocate impacts between co-products, the importance of system boundaries, and methods for handling recycling in LCA. The instructor explains the challenges of allocation for co-products, system expansion, and the order of preference for allocation methods. Additionally, it explores closed-loop recycling, material bonuses, and the calculation of grade loss in recycling processes. The lecture also delves into energy recovery, end-of-life strategies, and the modeling of waste treatment. Overall, it provides a comprehensive overview of the key considerations and methodologies involved in addressing allocation and recycling issues in LCA.

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Instructors (3)

Jérôme Payet

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer

Claudia R. Binder, a Swiss, Canadian and Colombian citizen, was born in Montreal and spent most of her childhood in Switzerland and Colombia. She studied at ETH Zurich from 1985 to 1996, earning a degree in biochemistry and then a PhD in environmental sciences. After conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland in the US from 1996 to 1998, she returned to Switzerland and took a position as a senior research scientist at ETH Zurich, studying the interaction between human and environmental systems at the Institute for Natural and Social Science Interface. In 2006, Binder joined the University of Zurich as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, and in 2009 moved to the University of Graz in Austria where she served as a full professor of systems science. In 2011, she took a position at the University of Munich’s Department of Geography as a full professor of human-environment relations. Binder joined EPFL in March 2016 and set up the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) at ENAC; she also holds the La Mobilière Chair on Urban Ecology and Sustainable Living. Her research involves analyzing, modelling and assessing the transition of urban systems towards sustainability. She looks in particular at how we can better understand the dynamics of urban metabolism, what characterizes a sustainable city, and what drives and hinders transformation processes. She does so by combining knowledge from social, natural and data science. Her research focuses on food, energy, and sustainable living and transport in urban systems. In Switzerland, Binder was appointed to the Research Council, Programs Division of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in 2016 and serves on the Steering Committee of the SNSF’s National Research Program 71, “Managing Energy Consumption” and the Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER). She is also a member of the Steering Board on Sustainability Research for the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, she was elected as a member of the University Council of the University of Munich (LMU). At EPFL, Binder is the academic director of Design Together, a cross-disciplinary teaching initiative. She was appointed to the management team of the Energy Center in 2018 and as head of the working group on EPFL’s energy and sustainability strategy in 2019.

Aristide Henri Roger Athanassiadis

Aristide has a joint-PhD in Urbanism from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and The University of Melbourne on the topic of comprehensive urban environmental assessments. Since 2018, he was co-Chair of Circular Economy and Urban Metabolism at the Université Libre de Bruxelles where he advised local administrations on the regional circular economy plan and facilitated exchanges between researchers, policy makers and practitioners in order to develop projects that helped Brussels' economy and metabolism transition towards a more circular state. During the last years, he has collaborated and worked with/for several universities, research centres, environmental administrations, NGOs, youth organisations and consultancy firms on a great variety of projects around the topics of urban metabolism and circular economy. Finally, Aristide co-created the non-profit organisation and open-source initiative Metabolism of Cities (www.metabolismofcities.org) that aims to bring to create, share and apply urban metabolism knowledge, in policy and practice.

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Related concepts (32)

Recycling

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling).

Plastic recycling

Plastic recycling is the processing of plastic waste into other products. Recycling can reduce dependence on landfill, conserve resources and protect the environment from plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling rates lag those of other recoverable materials, such as aluminium, glass and paper. Through 2015, the world produced some 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, only 9% of which has been recycled, and only ~1% has been recycled more than once.

Aluminium recycling

Aluminium recycling is the process by which scrap aluminium can be reused in products after its initial production. The process involves simply re-melting the metal, which is far less expensive and energy-intensive than creating new aluminium (Recycled Aluminum-Secondary Aluminium) through the electrolysis of aluminium oxide (), which must first be mined from bauxite ore and then refined into aluminium oxide using the Bayer process and then refined again into aluminium metal using the Hall–Héroult process.

Electronic waste recycling

Electronic waste recycling, electronics recycling or e-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics; when referring to specific types of e-waste, the terms like computer recycling or mobile phone recycling may be used. Like other waste streams, re-use, donation and repair are common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste. Since its inception in the early 1990s, more and more devices are recycled worldwide due to increased awareness and investment.

Energy recovery

Energy recovery includes any technique or method of minimizing the input of energy to an overall system by the exchange of energy from one sub-system of the overall system with another. The energy can be in any form in either subsystem, but most energy recovery systems exchange thermal energy in either sensible or latent form. In some circumstances the use of an enabling technology, either daily thermal energy storage or seasonal thermal energy storage (STES, which allows heat or cold storage between opposing seasons), is necessary to make energy recovery practicable.

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