The CALIMERO project was presented with many of its partners at the SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) Europe 34th Annual Meeting. We contributed actively to sessions and poster presentations and got the opportunity to show the improvement and innovations made in LCA (Life Cycle Assessment).
Session Co-chaired by Antonino Marvuglia and Tomas Navarrete-Gutiérrez
A relevant session was the session titled “Innovation in LCA: Bridging Temporal Dynamics and Advancements in Inventory Data Modeling”. This session was co-chaired by CALIMERO project partners Antonino Marvuglia and Tomas Navarrete-Gutiérrez to address the need for representative data and temporal dynamics of inventory data modeling, considering the role of machine learning and AI to fill data gaps. The session revolved around two main topic:
Innovative Approaches in LCI Data Collection – Discuss several forms of innovative, granular LCI data and the tools for their generation and management. In particular, as the new chemicals introduced into the market every year are in the order of two thousand, the use of deep learning to cope with the high surge of data to assess their toxicity emerged as one of the most prominent and promising approaches.
Temporal and Geographical Differentiation in LCI Data – Addressing the complex problems of dynamic characterization of inventories taking into account time-related and geographically specific aspects of both the production systems and the economy. The session also provided a hint on the progress of the prospective and time-resolvedLCIs through newly developed Python packages.
Thomas Schaubroeck’s and Dieuwertje Schrijvers contribution
Thomas Schaubroeck (LIST) was presenting work on two selected topics:
Poster Spotlight on Dynamic LCA: Schaubroeck’s poster “Fully dynamic carbon footprint of circular biobased systems – A framework with temporal life cycle inventory database (DyPLCA) tailored for forestry and wood products cascades” introduces advancements to be made to the DyPLCA tool & database, in particular for the forestry sector and wood products.
The CALIMERO project has been funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and connects to two other projects LCA4BIO and ALIGNED. The DyPLCA methodology still being improved, but preliminary results show a significant potential for this LCA variant.
Another Poster Spotlight presented by Thomas Schaubroeck, stepping in for Dieuwertje Schrijvers (WeLOOP), was “Evaluating the economic sustainability in LCSA – learnings from the International Round Table of Materials Criticality”. This work brought a new view on the evaluation of criticality in the context of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, by putting forward the stakeholder dependency of a raw material criticality assessment. This is one aspect of the research conducted within the CALIMERO project, that aims to clarify the role of criticality in the evaluation of the sustainability of the bioeconomy.
Tomas Rydberg’s Contribution
Tomas Rydberg (IVL), also from the CALIMERO project presented the poster “ProScale-E – An easy-to-use scoring approach for ecotoxicity potential assessment”. In this contribution, Rydberg provides an assessment of the ProScale-E tool which is a simplified scoring approach that makes it possible to use an economic method for toxicological effect assessment.
The project partners’ contribution to the SETAC conference thus confirmed their dedication to advancing LCA methodologies, providing inspiration and collaboration across sectors, and progress in integrating LCA activities.
