How can Life Cycle Assessment help your organization achieve its sustainability goals?

Today, 90% of chemicals are produced from fossil-based feedstocks in a linear “take-make-waste” model. This method of production causes problems and contributes to global challenges such as climate change, chemical pollution and biodiversity loss, said Dr. Polina Yaseneva, a lecturer in sustainability and life cycle assessment at University College London, in our recent webinar Designing Green: Leveraging Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Chemistry.

An alternative is the circular economy, which aims to minimize waste, reduce resource use and build a closed-loop system where by-products from one process become feedstock for another.

“There is a high incentive to switch to a circular manufacturing model. This means that we’re looking more at renewable feedstocks for chemical production,” Polina said. Renewable feedstocks in this context include bio-based inputs, captured carbon dioxide from industrial emissions or the atmosphere and post-consumer or post-industrial recycled materials.

End-of-life strategies are equally critical to closing the loop and include carbon capture from incineration, chemical and mechanical recycling technologies, and designing inherently biodegradable or compostable compounds.

“The transition to this circular manufacturing model would imply quite a significant change in technology,” Polina said, outlining several critical considerations, including:

• Developing new chemical reactions
• Supporting technologies for new chemistry
• Integrating new processes with old manufacturing methods
• Building new business models and supply chains

“To support this transition, we use Life Cycle Assessment as the most comprehensive tool to assess a production system’s environmental sustainability,” Polina said.

The methodology behind LCA is defined by international standards (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044). LCA plays a key role in shaping product policies and environmental performance metrics as a part of the European Green Deal. For the chemical sector, this includes integrating LCA into the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.

“It’s also a framework aimed at improving environmental performance through the lifecycle,” said Polina, referring to the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, adopted in 2024. The regulation expands the EU’s ecodesign framework beyond energy-related products to virtually all physical goods on the EU market. It requires manufacturers to assess and optimize products based on durability, reparability, recyclability, and environmental impact using LCA-based criteria.

There are several challenges organizations face when it comes to widespread LCA application, including data availability and transparency, harmonization of LCA approaches and the resource intensity of LCA. The solution? Digitalization, according to Polina. She outlined three ways digitalization can help organizations overcome these challenges:

• On a company level: Digital twins and digital representations of the product process as a prerequisite for virtualization of supply chains.
• On a data exchange level: The development and use of a safe and transparent data sharing infrastructure.
• For prediction: The use of AI in the search for more sustainable and safe chemistries and manufacturing.

One case study for LCA is its use in the nanocellulose market.

“Nanocellulose has been studied for use in multiple industries, such as pharmaceuticals, paper production, cosmetics, energy and so on. Really, the possible applications of nanocellulose are quite diverse,” Polina said.

Although the global nanocellulose market is projected to grow to $3 billion by 2033, the industry still faces several barriers when it comes to unlocking nanocellulose markets:

• Uncertainties about the environmental impacts
• Future impact predictions and development policies
• Data sharing models
• Feedstock availability
• Cost analysis

Polina presented ongoing research focused on tackling these barriers based on an LCA application of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) manufacturing.

“Our aim was to reproduce an industrially relevant process to quantify a benchmark for the production of cellulose nanocrystals,” Polina said. She, along with Dr. Zhimian Hao and several collaborators, looked at the impact of recycling and neutralization of the acidic waste stream in the process of acid hydrolysis of kraft pulp.

Creating frameworks for both processes allowed the team to identify several hot spots, environmental tradeoffs and hidden factors that would impact strategic decision-making.

Polina shared an overview of the entire process step-by-step, including identifying environmental sustainability objectives, considering alternative production routes and mapping out technologies, which you can see by watching the full webinar Designing Green: Leveraging Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Chemistry.

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