Life cycle assessment of food catering menus in a university canteen located in Southern Italy.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is acknowledged to be suited for the assessment of the energy-environmental burdens of foods, which are estimated to be overall one of the main impact sources worldwide. A right nutrition is even more fundamental for the healthy growing of the population, which has now, however, to consider ever more the aspect connected to its environmental impact. Under this perspective, this study aims at exploring the environmental burdens associated with a local university canteen for students through the application of LCA to a set of meal combination scenarios offered weekly to consumers.

Wastewater recovery for sustainable agricultural systems in the circular economy - A systematic literature review of Life Cycle Assessments.

Water availability and quality are known to affect agricultural production and nutrition. The aim of this study was to elaborate a systematic literature review of the most sustainable ways of wastewater treatment towards achieving circular economy (CE) in agro-industry activities. From the SLR, the authors selected twenty-seven papers that they classified into the three research themes of recovery of wastewater into irrigation water, extraction of sludge for production of bio-based compounds, and recovery of nutrients for soil amendment, including recovering of feeds for aquaculture, and recovery of nutrient biosolids for soil amendment.

A combined assessment of the energy, economic and environmental performance of a photovoltaic system in the Italian context.

Policymakers are increasingly moving towards greater investments in research in the renewable energy sector, in order to reduce costs, making private investment affordable, so as to accelerate the achievement of grid parity. This evidence boosts for investigating the way the convenience of investing in a solar photovoltaic (PV) system, in Italy, is unrelated to any form of public incentive. Under this perspective, this paper is focused upon designing a residential 3 kW PV system and providing a full set of indicators for the assessment of its multi-dimension performance in an holistic, integrated approach.