Prof.dr.ir. Jeroen Guinée has worked at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University since 1987. His research and teaching focus on life cycle assessment (LCA). He completed his PhD on LCA in 1995 and was involved as PI in numerous national and EU projects on LCA-related topics. He was the project leader and editor of one of the most respected publications in Life Cycle Assessment: “Handbook on Life Cycle Assessment. Operational Guide to the ISO Standards”. He has published over 100 scientific papers and contributed to several books. He teaches an advanced LCA course for Industrial Ecology Master students, supervised numerous master and PhD students and Postdocs, and is currently involved in several national and EU projects on Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD). As one of the founders of the Life Cycle Assessment as we know it today, Jeroen Guinée has 35 years of international experience and an in-depth knowledge of life cycle assessment methods and applications.
The roles of RA & LCA and the meaning of life cycles for Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD)
Jeroen Guinée, Institute of Environmental Science, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) approach is receiving increasing attention. The EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) defines SSbD as: “a pre-market approach to chemicals that focuses on providing a function (or service), while avoiding volumes and chemical properties that may be harmful to human health or the environment […]”. In addition, “overall [environmental] sustainability should be ensured by minimizing the environmental footprint of chemicals in particular on climate change, resource use, ecosystems and biodiversity from a lifecycle perspective”. The main methods to support SSbD at least include Risk Assessment RA and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). As a consequence, SSbD requires interdisciplinary collaboration of different scientific and R&D communities. In order to achieve effective and fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration, we need to create mutual understanding of each other’s methods, semantics and definitions. The strengths and weaknesses of each of RA and LCA, and the relation between them, have been a topic of debate over two decades. In this presentation, the main messages from this debate will summarized. Additionally, examples of semantic misunderstandings between the two communities will be discussed focusing on the term ‘life cycle’ in combination with the terms ‘chemical’, ‘material’ and ‘product’. For the discussion on Ra and LCA, we find that RA and LCA show fundamental differences and can therefore not be integrated in the sense that one can replace the other. Instead, we should combine the results from both for a complete and comprehensive assessment of possible trade-offs as aimed for in SSbD. Regarding the meaning on ‘life cycle’ in combination with the terms ‘chemical’, ‘material’ and ‘product’, we conclude that it’s often unclear what ‘life cycle’ refers to in SbD/SSbD studies, while also the meaning of ‘chemical’, ‘material’ and ‘product’ is unclear of different in different communities. Future SSbD studies should explicitly define these terms and combine them with graphical representations of life cycles (as flowcharts). The meaning of life is debated already for centuries; let us prevent that the meaning of life cycles gets the same destiny.
