Purpose As LCA is widely applied for benchmarking and decision-making, the need to clarify the ambiguity within fundamental methodological issues is imperative. Nutrient substitution, a subcategory of substitution, where credits are given for secondary fertilizer, is one of the common means to solve multi-functionality in LCA studies. This review aims to unravel the unique challenges associated with nutrient substitution, give...

Purpose Road vehicles cause considerable amounts of CO 2 e emissions over their life cycle. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) report CO 2 e emissions of past years on corporate level according to the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and produce vehicle LCAs to identify GHG hotspots on the product-level. However, no approach to combine this past and future orientation of emissions modelling on fleet and product level yet exi...

Purpose Digital closed-loop medication administration (CLMA) is a prime example of how digitalization in healthcare can reduce time and costs while simultaneously increasing patient safety. However, in contrast to its social and economic benefits, associated environmental impacts have never been investigated. Since the required amount of packaging material is seen as a major subject of criticism, we assess associated environme...

Upscaling scenarios are indispensable elements of prospective life cycle assessment (LCA). However, current studies reveal confusing terminology and a wide range of approaches in this area. Therefore, we first defined the term upscaling scenario as the description of a possible future target stage of emerging technology, including the development pathway from a current stage within the course of research and development to thi...

Summary Carbon‐based materials (CBMs) for energetic and material purposes combine biogenic and anthropogenic carbon cycles. In the latter, numerous manufactured products with various in‐use lifespans accumulate as anthropogenic carbon stocks. Understanding the behavior of these stocks is an important requirement to estimate not only future waste amounts, source for secondary raw materials, but also the impacts and effects in c...

Summary An input‐output‐based life cycle inventory (IO‐based LCI) is grounded on economic environmental input‐output analysis (IO analysis). It is a fast and low‐budget method for generating LCI data sets, and is used to close data gaps in life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to the fact that its methodological basis differs from that of process‐based inventory, its application in LCA is a matter of controversy. We developed a Ger...

Summary This article presents the application of life‐cycle assessment in early phases of process design in the context of technology that employs a bio‐based material. The goal is to identify hot spots in the process chains with regard to environmental impacts by performing a dominance analysis. By focusing his activities on the hot spots identified, the designer is given the opportunity to efficiently improve environmental p...