LCA based circularity indices of systems at different scales: a holistic approach.

Many are the definitions of Circular Economy as well as the policies and strategies for its implementation. However, gaps still exist in quantifying the effects of circularity. The existing approaches are usually sector- or product-specific, limited to microscale systems, and/or fail to simultaneously assess the environmental impacts of the studied system. This paper introduces a generally applicable method in which a set of LCA-based indices of circularity are able to detect the effects of circularity/symbiosis strategies on the environmental performance of meso- and macro-systems. These indices quantify the overall system's circularity level by comparing the impacts of a system in which the components interact with each other (with a certain level of circularity) with an equivalent linear system (where no circularity takes place). The method works both on existing and projected systems, being able to track the effects of future circularity policies. This method obviates the limitations and the gaps mentioned above: it applies to meso- and macro-systems, it is not bound to a specific sector, it allows to capture the environmental impacts, and it is sensitive to the temporal dimension. This approach provides a tool to inform managers and policymakers for planning circularity actions and monitor their effectiveness while also capturing the temporal dimension.

The environmental footprints of the feeds used by the EU chicken meat industry.

Chicken meat production in the European Union (EU) causes environmental pressures within and beyond the EU, mostly due to feed consumption. The expected dietary shift from red to poultry meat will drive changes in the demand for chicken feeds and the associated environmental impacts, calling for a renewed attention on this supply chain. By performing a break-down analysis based on material flow accounting, this paper assesses the annual environmental burden caused within and outside of the EU by each single feed consumed by the EU chicken meat industry from 2007 to 2018. The increased feed demand required to support the growth of the EU chicken meat industry over the analyzed period caused a 17 % increase in cropland use - 6.7 million hectares in 2018. Instead, CO2 emissions linked to feed demand decreased by ~45 % over the same period. Despite an overall improvement in resource and impact intensity, chicken meat production was not decoupled from environmental burden. In 2018, 0.40 Mt. of nitrogen, 0.28 Mt. of phosphorous, and 0.28 Mt. of potassium inorganic fertilizers were implied. Our findings indicate that the sector is not yet compliant with the EU sustainability targets defined in the Farm To Fork Strategy, calling for an urgent need to fill existing policy implementation gaps. The EU chicken meat industry's environmental footprints were driven by endogenous factors such as the feed use efficiency at the chicken farming stage and the feed cultivation efficiency within the EU, as well as by exogenous factors such as the import of feed via international trade. Limitations on the use of alternative feed sources, as well as the exclusion of the imports from the EU legal framework constitute a crucial gap, which hamper fully leveraging existing solutions.

Estimating the impact on water scarcity due to coffee production, trade, and consumption worldwide and a focus on EU.

Coffee consumption is concentrated in the "Global North", while production is mainly located in the "Global South". This trade-driven dependency leads to the exploitation of natural resources. As an export-oriented cash crop, such dependency jeopardizes the existence of a fair distribution of the risks and revenues among all the actors taking part in its globalized supply chain. Coffee trees are mainly rain-fed and only partly irrigated. However, the increasing global coffee demand led to higher consumption of freshwater, which can exacerbate the stressed condition of already stressed water basins. This study quantifies the impact of global coffee consumption on water scarcity, considering the larger system made of producer and consumer countries. The global displacement of such impact is driven by consumer preferences. We found that the US, EU and Asian countries' coffee consumption create impact on water scarcity mostly in African and South American countries, which is also representative of the economic disparities existing behind the global trade flows. Climate change will likely affect the varieties currently preferred by global consumers. Therefore, immediate environmental sustainability actions including water resource preservation are necessary to face current and future challenges.

Sustainability of agro-livestock integration: Implications and results of Emergy evaluation.

This study aims to assess the sustainability of an agroforestry system: i.e. a system obtained by the union of two productions to get at least two by-products from the same productive space. In particular, this case study presents the integration of a goose raising system with an organic grape production, from an environmental point of view. This integration is mainly designed to have two simultaneous co-products (grape and goose meat) with: i) a less intensive use of machineries for weeding and ii) avoiding use of chemical fertilizers and weeding. The sustainability is assessed by means of emergy evaluation. Emergy is a thermodynamic based tool able to estimates the environmental cost of products and services in terms of the solar energy (directly and indirectly) required for its production. As Emergy is not a state function, its final value depends on the way the product is made. The set theory applied to the emergy evaluation enables the comparison between the integrated system and the originating isolated systems in a proper way. Results confirm that the integrated system enables a saving, in emergy terms, amounting to 33% compared to the two originating isolated production systems. Emergy evaluation is able to keep track of the lower amount of resources required from outside the agroforestry system due to the optimization of resources internally available.

Accounting for "land-grabbing" from a biocapacity viewpoint.

The comparison of the Ecological Footprint and its counterpart (i.e. biocapacity) allow for a classification of the world's countries as ecological creditors (Ecological Footprint lower than biocapacity) or debtors (Ecological Footprint higher than biocapacity). This classification is a national scale assessment on an annual time scale that provides a view of the ecological assets appropriated by the local population versus the natural ecological endowment of a country. We show that GDP per capita over a certain threshold is related with the worsening of the footprint balance in countries classified as ecological debtors. On the other hand, this correlation is lost when ecological creditor nations are considered. There is evidence that governments and investors from high GDP countries are playing a crucial role in impacting the environment at the global scale which is significantly affecting the geography of sustainability and preventing equal opportunities for development. In particular, international market dynamics and the concentration of economic power facilitate the transfer of biocapacity related to "land grabbing", i.e. large scale acquisition of agricultural land. This transfer mainly occurs from low to high GDP countries, regardless of the actual need of foreign biocapacity, as expressed by the national footprint balance. A first estimation of the amount of biocapacity involved in this phenomenon is provided in this paper in order to better understand its implications on global sustainability and national and international land use policy.

A thermodynamic geography: night-time satellite imagery as a proxy measure of emergy.

Night-time satellite imagery enables the measurement, visualization, and mapping of energy consumption in an area. In this paper, an index of the "sum of lights" as observed by night-time satellite imagery within national boundaries is compared with the emergy of the nations. Emergy is a measure of the solar energy equivalent used, directly or indirectly, to support the processes that characterize the economic activity in a country. Emergy has renewable and non-renewable components. Our results show that the non-renewable component of national emergy use is positively correlated with night-time satellite imagery. This relationship can be used to produce emergy density maps which enable the incorporation of spatially explicit representations of emergy in geographic information systems. The region of Abruzzo (Italy) is used to demonstrate this relationship as a spatially disaggregate case.

Integrating methods for the environmental sustainability: the SPIn-Eco Project in the Province of Siena (Italy).

This paper shows how different methods can be integrated in order to provide an organic evaluation of the environmental sustainability at the territorial level. A territory is a complex, dynamic and open system where a population develops, uses resources, produces goods and services, consumes, depletes and finally obtains economic results. All these elements characterise human behaviour, which can be monitored, measured and compared to the capacity of the environment to sustain it in the long run. The SPIn-Eco Project for the Province of Siena (Italy) is described as an example of an environmental sustainability assessment of an area, and its methods (Ecological Footprint, Greenhouse Gas Inventory, Extended Exergy Analysis, Emergy Evaluation, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Remote Sensing) are briefly introduced. This Project has been proposed and funded by the most important provincial administrative and financial institutions in the territory (the Administration of the Province of Siena and the Monte dei Paschi Foundation, respectively), and was designed and realised in 4 years (2001-2004) by a research team coordinated by the University of Siena.

Correlations and complementarities in data and methods through Principal Components Analysis (PCA) applied to the results of the SPIn-Eco Project.

This paper demonstrates how the results from different methods can be interpreted on the basis of a statistical approach that can help find new hints in the evaluation of sustainability at the territorial level. The SPIn-Eco Project for the Province of Siena (Italy) is an example of an environmental sustainability assessment of an area using methods that are suitable for a large system: Ecological Footprint, Greenhouse Gas Inventory, Extended Exergy Analysis, Emergy Evaluation, and Remote Sensing. The calculation of many indicators, derived from these methods, has prompted us to use a statistical method (Principal Components Analysis, PCA) to understand the degree of similarity/congruence of the indicators (here we have examined 26 of them) and the possibility of recognizing patterns or clusters in the description of the 36 municipalities that compose the Province of Siena. Among the results, unexpectedly, emergy flow and the Ecological Footprint resulted as being completely uncorrelated, apparently due to the importance that the non-renewable part of the emergy holds in the evaluation. The municipalities of the province are considerably spread out over the graphs, even though that of Siena is quite far from the rest along the first dimension. In addition, we were able to distinguish between more homogeneous districts (sets of municipalities), such as Val di Merse and Val d'Orcia, and very diverse ones, such as Val d'Elsa and Val di Chiana.

Environmental accounting for the lagoon of Venice and the case of fishing.

This paper presents the application of the eMergy evaluation, introduced by H.T. Odum as an efficient methodology of environmental accounting. The results of this analysis are a part of a wider sustainability assessment for the Province of Venice realized in 2003. Within a territorial sustainability analysis, it is necessary to implement an environmental accounting method, which is able: to precisely consider the boundaries of the investigated system (spatial scale); to arbitrarily separate the life of the investigated system into periods (temporal scale); to account for both economic and natural support to a given territorial system in order to implement a sustainable management of resources; to assess all the items supporting the system on the basis of a physical unit that is objective (while the traditional economic evaluation method is based on individual preferences, hence it is subjective). The Province of Venice is a very complex system due, on one hand, to the heavy and consolidated presence of industrial activity since the beginning of the 20th century and, on the other hand, to the principal natural ecosystem which characterizes it: the lagoon, the largest wetland in the Mediterranean Sea. The role of the lagoon, as a provider of resources and services is represented by the analysis of two aspects: the lagoon as an ecosystem on the basis of the evaluation of all flows that cyclically support its biotic activity and the lagoon as a productive system on the basis of the contribution of both natural and "economic" inputs that support human activity. In particular, the case of clam fishing will be presented to put on evidence the importance of natural inputs that are systematically neglected by the traditional accounting methodologies.