Country-Specific External Costs of Abiotic Resource Use Based on User Cost Model in Life Cycle Impact Assessment.

Abiotic resources are indispensable in society, but there are concerns regarding their depletion, scarcity, and increasing prices, resulting in potential economic damage in the future. To address these concerns, it is effective to consider the external costs of resource use. Although resource availability is different among mining sites, and local conditions are relevant in assessing resource scarcity, previous studies have assessed external costs and potential impacts of abiotic resource use globally. This study provides country-specific characterization factors (CFs) of abiotic resource use in life cycle impact assessment based on the user cost model, which represents the external costs of abiotic resource use to reflect country-specific resource scarcity. We demonstrate considerable variations in the CFs depending on the mining country, suggesting that the choice of mining country can affect external costs. The global external cost of abiotic resource use in 2020 was estimated at 1.9 trillion $, with a major contribution from the extraction of fossil fuels in the United States. Historical trends of the CFs and relevant parameters showed temporal fluctuations, emphasizing the importance of regularly updating the data underlying the calculation of the CFs. Country-level assessments of the external costs of resource use can contribute to discussions on the responsibilities of consuming countries by incorporating material footprint studies.

Assessment of environmental sustainability in renal healthcare.

The health effects of climate change are becoming increasingly important; there are direct effects from heatwaves and floods, and indirect effects from the altered distribution of infectious diseases and changes in crop yield. Ironically, the healthcare system itself carries an environmental burden, contributing to environmental health impacts. Life cycle assessment is a widely accepted and well-established method that quantitatively evaluates environmental impact. Given that monetary evaluations have the potential to motivate private companies and societies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using market mechanisms, instead of assessing the carbon footprint alone, we previously developed a life cycle impact assessment method based on an endpoint that integrates comprehensive environmental burdens into a single index-the monetary cost. Previous investigations estimated that therapy for chronic kidney disease had a significant carbon footprint in the healthcare sector. We have been aiming to investigate on the environmental impact of chronic kidney disease based on field surveys from the renal department in a hospital and several health clinics in Japan. To live sustainably, it is necessary to establish cultures, practices, and research that aims to conserve resources to provide environmentally friendly healthcare in Japan.

Life cycle assessment of maize cultivation and biomass utilization in northern Thailand.

Maize, a major food source for the world, is a high-yield commodity crop, and one of five major crops in Thailand. Occupying about 33% of the Thai upland farmlands, maize farming has been growing tremendously especially in northern Thailand. However, after harvesting, open burning is widely used in order to get rid of maize cobs and husks in land preparation for the next period. The current maize farming practices have caused several problems to local communities as well as urban dwellers. The objectives of this research were: (i) to analyze the life cycle inventory of maize cultivation, maize cob pellet production and heavy fuel oil production in northern Thailand using IDEA v2.0 and ecoinvent v3.0 databases; (ii) to evaluate environmental impacts of maize cultivation, maize cob pellet production and heavy fuel oil production using A Global Scale Environmental Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LIME-3) with the results of weighting (Country-specific) based on monetary valuation of end-points. This study evaluated the life cycle environmental impacts of maize cultivation and continuing through biomass energy production from maize cob by comparing with heat production from heavy fuel oil in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts in the north of Thailand by using two different databases, IDEA v2.0 and ecoinvent v3.0 with an endpoint-based life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method (LIME-3). The system boundary of this study includes land preparation, planting, weeding, farming, harvesting, maize cob pellet production and heat production from maize cob pellet and heavy fuel oil. The units of analysis in this study are 1 kg of maize grain, 3.76E-03 MJ of biomass energy production from maize cob and 3.76E-03 MJ of heat production from heavy fuel oil, respectively. The data were obtained from field survey supplemented with the Thai National Life Cycle Inventory Database and other scientific publications. The results included the environmental impacts of maize cultivation and continuing through biomass energy production from maize cob by comparing with heat production from heavy fuel oil in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts by using two different databases with LCIA method on the endpoint approaches (LIME-3). The total damage cost based on IDEA v2.0 life cycle inventory (LCI) database in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts was about 4.64E-01 USD and 4.89E-01 USD, respectively. As regards ecoinvent v3.0 database, the total damage cost in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts was about 5.37E-01USD and 5.99E-01 USD, respectively. It can be seen that the total damage cost using different inventory databases in Chiang Dao are slightly higher than Mae Chaem due to different input materials. The result of total cost using inventory data from ecoinvent v3.0 is slightly higher than IDEA v2.0 due to different inventory processes in each database. However, the results in this study demonstrated that the databases show similar trends in the assessment results. On the other hand, certain numerical differences between the databases at some points were found to be more substantial. The results of present study are particularly relevant to policy choices for improving or using the good practices for maize cultivation, which would reduce the environmental performance of maize production systems in the area. To address the air pollution issue from biomass open burning of agricultural residues in the study area, the government agencies in Thailand should be responsible for promoting better biomass management for the future.

Life cycle assessment of Japanese high-temperature conductive adhesives.

The electrically conductive adhesives (ECA) are on the verge of a breakthrough as reliable interconnection materials for electronic components. As the ban of lead (Pb) in the electronics industry becomes a reality, the ECA's could be attractive overall alternatives to high melting point (HMP) Pb-based solder pastes. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to estimate trade-offs between the energy use and the potential toxicity of two future types of ECA's and one HMP Pb-based. The probability is around 90% that the overall CO2 emissions from an ECA based on a tin-bismuth alloy are lower than for a silver-epoxy based ECA, whereas the probability is about 80% that the cumulative energy demand would be lower. It is more uncertain whether the tin-bismuth ECA would contribute to less CO2, or consume less energy, than a HMP Pb-based solder paste. Moreover, for the impact categories contributing to the life-cycle impact assessment method based on end point modeling (LIME) damage category of human health, the tin-bismuth ECA shows a 25 times lower score, and a silver-epoxy based ECA shows an 11 times lower score than the HMP Pb-based solder paste. In order to save resources and decrease CO2 emissions it is recommended to increase the collection and recycling of printed board assemblies using silver-epoxy based ECA.