Carbon footprint and life cycle economic costs of pilot Know-as-you-Throw schemes in Italy and Spain.

Considerable resources are spent globally on actions to improve the separate collection of municipal waste aiming to minimise the environmental and economic impacts of municipal waste management. One of such actions are know-as-you-throw (KAYT) schemes, which aim to change the behaviour of waste generators through tailored communication of information. KAYT schemes offer a relatively uncontroversial and simple tool, yet their environmental and economic performance remains unknown due to their limited implementation.

Linking the Environmental Pressures of China's Capital Development to Global Final Consumption of the Past Decades and into the Future.

China's rapid growth was fueled by investments that grew more than 10-fold since 1995. Little is known about how the capital assets acquired, while being used in productive processes for years or decades, satisfy global final consumption of goods and services, or how the resource use and emissions that occurred during capital formation are attributable to past or future consumption. Here, enabled by a new global model of capital formation and use, we quantify the linkages over the past 2 decades and into the future between six environmental pressures (EPs) associated with China's capital formation and attributable to Chinese as well as non-Chinese consumption.

Hybrid life cycle assessment of an onshore wind farm including direct and indirect services: A case study in Guajira, Colombia.

To diversify and decarbonize its energy system, Colombia plans a sizeable increase in wind power by installing onshore wind farms in the Guajira region. While presumably superior to other alternatives in terms of environmental performance, this assumption cannot be tested due to the lack of studies in this region. To assess the potential environmental performance of wind power in Colombia, we conduct a hybrid life cycle assessment of a wind farm of 19.

Pandemics and the Environmental Rebound Effect: Reflections from COVID-19.

The irruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns on sustainability issues. The pandemic has accelerated the implementation of technologies such as ICT and shifts in mobility behaviour. Such changes have the potential to reduce environmental burdens, but also to trigger large environmental rebound effects.

Quantified Uncertainties in Comparative Life Cycle Assessment: What Can Be Concluded?

Interpretation of comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results can be challenging in the presence of uncertainty. To aid in interpreting such results under the goal of any comparative LCA, we aim to provide guidance to practitioners by gaining insights into uncertainty-statistics methods (USMs). We review five USMs-discernibility analysis, impact category relevance, overlap area of probability distributions, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST), and modified NHST-and provide a common notation, terminology, and calculation platform.

Freshwater Vulnerability beyond Local Water Stress: Heterogeneous Effects of Water-Electricity Nexus Across the Continental United States.

Human health and economic prosperity are vulnerable to freshwater shortage in many parts of the world. Despite a growing literature that examines the freshwater vulnerability in various spatiotemporal contexts, existing knowledge has been conventionally constrained by a territorial perspective. On the basis of spatial analyses of monthly water and electricity flows across 2110 watersheds and three interconnected power systems, this study investigates the water-electricity nexus (WEN)'s transboundary effects on freshwater vulnerability in the continental United States in 2014.

Do Methodological Choices in Environmental Modeling Bias Rebound Effects? A Case Study on Electric Cars.

Improvements in resource efficiency often underperform because of rebound effects. Calculations of the size of rebound effects are subject to various types of bias, among which methodological choices have received particular attention. Modellers have primarily focused on choices related to changes in demand, however, choices related to modeling the environmental burdens from such changes have received less attention.

A holistic approach to the environmental evaluation of food waste prevention.

The environmental evaluation of food waste prevention is considered a challenging task due to the globalised nature of the food supply chain and the limitations of existing evaluation tools. The most significant of these is the rebound effect: the associated environmental burdens of substitutive consumption that arises as a result of economic savings made from food waste prevention. This study introduces a holistic approach to addressing these challenges, with a focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from household food waste in the UK.

The remarkable environmental rebound effect of electric cars: a microeconomic approach.

This article presents a stepwise, refined, and practical analytical framework to model the microeconomic environmental rebound effect (ERE) stemming from cost differences of electric cars in terms of changes in multiple life cycle environmental indicators. The analytical framework is based on marginal consumption analysis and hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA). The article makes a novel contribution through a reinterpretation of the traditional rebound effect and methodological refinements.

Building waste management core indicators through Spatial Material Flow Analysis: net recovery and transport intensity indexes.

In this paper, the material and spatial characterization of the flows within a municipal solid waste (MSW) management system are combined through a Network-Based Spatial Material Flow Analysis. Using this information, two core indicators are developed for the bio-waste fraction, the Net Recovery Index (NRI) and the Transport Intensity Index (TII), which are aimed at assessing progress towards policy-related sustainable MSW management strategies and objectives. The NRI approaches the capacity of a MSW management system for converting waste into resources through a systematic metabolic approach, whereas the TII addresses efficiency in terms of the transport requirements to manage a specific waste flow throughout the entire MSW management life cycle.